Chapter 2

"Your name, kid?"

The grizzled man in a suit slunk toward me, standing above without any care for my condition. I propped myself up on one hand.

"Reika."

"...Come on now, I'm gonna need more than that. Surname?"

"Don't have one."

"My ass you don't."

"It's not mine anymore."

I was about on my feet when he grit his teeth in response.

"...Fine, not like I'm in any position to ask questions about what goes on in the lives of Hunters, new or old."

His war-grazed scowl perused my features, and took note of my bangs, which hung at the same level as his chin from his height. I flashed him an awkward, tilted smirk, unsure of how to react or present myself. The fact that I might be half-concussed did not occur to me at the time.

"Himeno. How's that sound?"

"Sorry?"

"That's your surname now. Himeno. 'Cuz of your hair, you've got a hime cut. So, Himeno. Sound good? Nod for yes, shake for no."

I said the name to myself a few times under my breath. Himeno… Himeno… huh… It was the first thing I'd had in life that was mine, that wasn't given to me by my father or mother. It didn't matter how appropriate the name was, or how much I liked it at the time. What mattered was that it was mine. So, I nodded.

"Alright, so your name's Reika Himeno. Glad we've got that sorted. Age?"

"Uh…sixteen? No, wait… seventeen. I think."

"Seriously? You gotta be kidding me… they get younger every year," he grumbled, pacing and tapping some of the devil entrails with his toe. "You got much experience hunting devils?"

"A little."

"Kid, you ever been interviewed for a job before? Actually, scratch that, forget I asked. The point is, you gotta explain to me why you're qualified for this job. What devil experience you got?"

I pointed at the bubbling devil corpse behind me, with scattered schoolkids still fleeing in the background.

"That all?"

"Pretty much."

"And you did that alone? No backup from a private hunter? No devil contract?"

I nod at him again, but then I remembered.

"Sasaki…" I muttered, glancing around.

"Huh? The girl we found over there?" He gestured to the wall where she had been thrown earlier.

"Is she alright?"

"Not sure, she was unconscious when we found her. Nasty blow to the head," he uttered, tapping the back of his head in a slow, blasé manner. "So, she's partly responsible for this too? Better make a note of that…"

I sighed in relief. Even though I had no intention of fighting a devil when I came to school like she did, the fact that she was with me when it happened gave me a sort of… focus. Somewhere I could place my attention and care that wasn't myself.

When I took notice of him again, the man was rooting around inside the devil's corpse and only spoke to me again when it seemed like he'd found something inside it. I was only able to spot that it was something tiny and slim before he slipped it into his pocket.

"Hm… I'll overlook what a sloppy job you did of it, because the fact of the matter is you did it at all. Though, what you did was absolutely insane."

"Oh… did I… do something illegal?"

"That part's questionable. But if you qualified, that wouldn't be an issue."

"Qualify?"

"For Public Safety."

"I don't think I could honestly. You just told me what I did was insane, after all."

"I know what I said. Look, the thing about devil hunting is that those that are smart, or quick, or strong, they all have something in common: they're predictable. The best kind of devil hunters? The ones that live the longest? The batshit insane ones. The ones with more than a few screws loose. It's only by being just as crazy as the devils, if not even more so, that we even stand a chance at fighting them head on. Especially lumps of meat like us, without any devil contracts to our name." He stopped himself when that sentence ended, almost inspecting himself with his hands, sensing parts of his body obscured by his clothing. "Or, at least, not anymore."

"A few screws loose…"

"Try not to think too hard on it right now, it's something I find myself having to remind the newbies a lot, so you'll no doubt hear it again. All you need to know right now is this: what we want, as an organisation, is to put more fear into the devils than they put into humans. That's their weakness. And nothing's scarier than not knowing what a person will do next."

There was a kind of relaxing rigidity to his words, and even though it was a lot of information to process at once, I found myself still able to render the basic details.

"So… you think I could be… good at this?"

"In your current state?"

He pressed his fingers to his chin, his index finger rubbing against a prominent cheek scar that led from the corner of his lip.

"No. In fact, no fucking way. Look, you did a great job and all, kid, taking out a devil, but not only is it frowned upon for civilians to take hunter work away from them, it's also more often than not a total stroke of luck. I must have just gotten a little overeager, having seen it for the first time in a while, but you're not ready. Best not to give it too much thought."

He scooped up his black briefcase from the floor and began to walk away.

"But, I'm no heartless bastard. In the Private Sector, you get paid for exterminating devils, and this is no different, even though you weren't doing it for money."

Opening his jacket, he stuffed his hand into his inside breast pocket and pulled out a stack of Yen notes, flicking through them and swiping a small selection from inside.

"Here. It's from my own pocket, but I don't really give much of a shit. Public Safety pays me all this and what do they expect me to do with it 'cept buy more booze anyway? Might as well let you have it, you did us a service in a way, taking a devil off the streets."

His blank scowl lingered on me for a moment, the bills pinched between his fingers. He gestured with them, two little upward movements, as if he were offering a treat to a dog. Not knowing what else to do, the only natural thing for me to do was take the money, and once I had, I parted them to check the amount.

"300,000 yen…? Seriously?"

"Standard rate for a devil of that caliber. Could only begin to imagine what a girl like you could buy with that." His response sounded like a joke, but nothing in his voice changed. "All yours."

I clutched the bills in my hand for a moment, noticing the blood stains that I had accidentally been rubbing on the paper while I was inspecting them. As if my brain had filtered it out, only when I saw the blood on the money he'd given me did I notice that both my hands were caked in it.

Before I could acknowledge it any further, the man had strolled beyond the school gates.

"Will I see you again?"

He was startled for a moment, and, releasing a gruff sigh, took a sip from his hip flask.

"Did you not hear anything I just said? …Fine, if you insist on being stubborn about it, you can find me at the Public Safety cemetery plot. I won't tell you any more, if you're stupid enough to throw your life away then you can do the work yourself. This job isn't easy."

"For someone who's trying to dissuade me, you're giving me a lot of information."

"I've learned in life that telling an idiot to stop will only convince them more." His words were cut off by one more swig from his flask. "Oh, and, a few Public Safety peons will be here in a bit to take you to the hospital. If you want anything else, just pass on my name to one of the nurses. The place is Public Safety funded. Least we could do, considering how many saps of ours end up in there."

"Your name… you said your name is Kishibe, sir?" I called out to him.

"Right, yeah. Kishibe. Just Kishibe. Surnames are a lot more useful."

—

Just as Kishibe had said, two other people dressed from head to toe in black arrived and wordlessly escorted me into a car. Only when I was in the comfort of the leather seats did the true pain my body was experiencing hit me, and I clutched my arm, which throbbed with a sore, sharp, intermittent sting. One thought that kept me distracted from the pain was my other shoe, now mangled beyond repair, still swimming in devil blood where it had plopped earlier. It played on me enough where I almost asked one of the two Public Safety officers to turn us around, but it quickly dashed out of my head again, and I lost all motivation to ever find it again. Throughout this thought process, I rubbed my drenched, limp sock against the other shoe in anticipation, which went from being a subconscious habit to a sort of activity that I used to pass the time during the car ride, drawing meaningless paintings in the purple blood as if it were my canvas and my toe the brush.

We soon arrived, a fact that became known to me when one of the suits with legs opened the door for me and stood waiting for me to get out. Still clutching my arm, I shuffled out of the car and was welcomed by a set of iron gates, behind which lay a tall, municipal building on which the sign 'West Okubodaira City Hospital' teetered from on high. The pale light of street lamps painted the path ahead, leaving patches in the encroaching dark.

"Third floor," stated the Public Safety officer closest to me, who I differentiated from the other one due to a mole beneath his left eye. He never told me his name, so I decided he should be called Hokuro. He and Not-Hokuro once again led the way for me, leaving me no time to take in my surroundings as they paced on ahead regimentally, although there was little else to see except the clinical layout of a municipal hospital.

We arrived at the door where the placard 'Miss Ino Sasaki' was placed, and without much more fuss, Hokuro and Not-Hokuro spoke a quick, final line to me in unison before they went on their way: "It's open."

Reaching out my hand to the door, a voice broke out from inside.

"Is that you, Reika?"

I hesitated in surprise, but slipped out a reply.

"Yeah, it's me."

"I'm glad. Come on in, there's nobody else here."

"Sorry to be a bother," I muttered as I opened the door and slunk inside. When I saw Sasaki's face, directed at the ceiling as her head was wrapped in place with bandages, she struggled to shake her head.

"I was starting to wonder if anyone who wasn't here to ask me questions about the devil would actually come. But here you are. Unless…"

"Nope, no questions from me. Well, maybe a few."

"It's fine, I'm used to those. Except they're usually 'What are the answers to this week's homework?' or 'Why'd you not pay me a thousand yen again today, weirdo? You broke or something?' So, this is a nice change of pace," she said, followed by a spluttered, silent laugh.

I took a seat on the chair beside her bed, unsure of how to reply. Seemingly aware of the atmosphere, Sasaki cut in again.

"So, this is a proper Devil Hunter hospital room, huh… this is the kind of view they get? I'm jealous."

Sparks from the fading sun shot out in vain as it began to dip below the horizon, the skyline draped under a veneer of ultramarine kept bright by Tokyo's electric dreams. Invisible clouds swept into a blur in the semi-darkness, obscuring the signals of piercing stars, turning them into nothing more than vague muffles. Even from here, devil-related incidents could be seen, noticeable by the fires that would crop up and disappear in the night, lit and quenched just as quickly as public servants rushed from here to there without question to complete their work.

"The Devil's dead, right?" she continued. "I feel like I've been waiting to hear that before I could even let myself rest."

I nodded, still not quite able to process that it had happened. A pain in my arm reminded me, and I went to hold it.

"Thank god…" she sighed. "I could use a sleep right now. But, are you okay? In my head, I always wanted to imagine that I, or, uh, we, could kill a devil, but I didn't actually, properly believe it."

"I'm alright, definitely no worse off than you." I tapped my temple with my index. "And that's not going to cause any problems?"

"They said concussion and mild traumatic brain injury. When they first brought me here there was a lot of vomiting, but- oh yeah, I need to stay hydrated," she grabbed a bottle from the bedside table and took a sip, then continued: "there was a lot of vomiting, but it's stopped now, just a lot of blurriness, fatigue, headache." She screwed the cap back on and dropped it back on the table, flopping out her tongue. "Bleh, this water tastes gross, that would be the sensory issues. They said there might be some memory loss as well, but nothing permanent. I just need to rest. But I can't. I want to go back and see what happens."

"You really should stay here," I urged.

"I'll be fine, if I just rest a ton tonight then I'll be fine to go tomorrow. Just one thing. I need you to help me sneak out of here."

"Sneak out? Sasaki, I don't even plan on going to school tomorrow, and you shouldn't either."

"If I don't go then everything I've risked, and this stupid concussion, will all be for nothing. Please, just help me go tomorrow."

"Sneaking out of hospital with a patient, a patient under supervision from Public Safety? You realise how that sounds right?"

"I do."

I slumped down on the table, head in my folded arms.

"If you don't, I'll… uh… I'll report your absence tomorrow."

Way for her to rub it in. Was Sasaki always like this? Or did taking that leap yesterday make her a lot bolder? Honestly I couldn't give an assessment based on my experience with her. Up until today, we'd practically never spoken in class. Regardless of how little I knew about her, the girl here was certainly different from the Vice Class Representative that I'd been exposed to before. There was a quality about her that, unlike then, had started to draw me in.

"Fine… but don't expect this to work out," I exhaled, heaving my head up again. "I'll be impressed if we make it past the front door, I'm no expert when it comes to sneaking out."

With my arms spread across the table, I noticed that nobody had left any gifts out for Sasaki either. No food, no cards, no flowers. Would it have been the same if she died here?

—

A cackle slinked down the hallway.

"Bookworm devil," came a shout from someone who shuffled back into the crowd with a giggle.

"Creep."

"Liar"

Sasaki's feet rushed along with flat strides, but I stayed close to her to keep her from falling. Every so often, a gust of wind burst through the gaps in the scaffolding, threatening to knock her over.

"Whose idea was it to open the school today? Don't they know how dangerous it is?" gossiped one girl.

"No idea, but it's so gross, I hate it." retorted another.

"You hear who they said was responsible for this?"

The other girl laughed.

"Yeah right. Her? She's so lame. Must have got the idea in her head from all that trash she reads in the library."

"Yeah, and who would want to own up to this anyway? That devil totally trashed the school, and now it's totally freezing and there's dirt everywhere. Honestly, I'm going to get my father to complain about this. Public Safety is supposed to keep us safe from devils."

"Totally. Hey, maybe this devil is her, and someone finally put her down!"

They grasped each other and disappeared behind us, spewing more nondescript noises into the distance.

"Hey, Reika," said Sasaki.

I turned to her, but her eyes remained downcast.

"I don't regret what I did. If you're wondering that. I know it's stupid for me to expect what I wanted to happen to actually, well, happen, but… weirdly, I don't regret my decision. Does that make me… weird?"

"Weird…?"

"Yeah."

I didn't quite know what she meant by weird. By the way she had phrased it, she said it in a way that made me think she was asking whether what she did involved any kind of deviation from the expected, a difference that was worth noticing or pointing out, something that shouldn't normally be. So, considering that, I responded with how I thought.

"It does."

"It does?"

"Well, did you do anything like that before?"

"...No."

"But you did it anyway, right?"

"I did…"

"I don't know much about the kind of 'weird' you're asking about, but… I've done some weird stuff recently too. Weird for me. But I'm here now. And things are only going to get weirder. You said you don't regret what you did. So… embrace it, I suppose?"

She stopped in the hallway, despite patches of other school kids still dotted about, many primed with lines of shame as if there were a script sticking out of their back pocket.

"There was a man that came to my room earlier. He looked a little different from the others. Older. Weirder. He didn't quite say it in a way that made me realise at first, but… well, he thanked me. Only one person. Nothing else changed… but, one person said something about it. He gave me this."

She scooped a hand into her pocket and pulled out a lollipop. Her pursed lips warped into a grimace, and bubbles of laughs frothed up from her throat bit by bit, until she started to titter. Irony-drawn ears foamed around the corner of her eyes. Before I knew it, she was running down the hallway, and I chased after her, worried she might lose her balance, but she ran as if she had never doubted that one foot would fall in front of the other. Soon, gasping for breath and ignorant of the stares that followed us, we had arrived at the back room, where all that remained there to be cleaned up was the ominous orb that served as the Sin Devil's centre surrounded by black and yellow striped tape, it's cracked light now only a muzzy grey gash.

"There it is."

Not far behind the remnants lied the sledge hammer, still coated in blood. Crouching under the tape, she approached and lifted its handle from the ground, stroking the wood with her thumb.

"This is what I did." she began, "and people will remember that. Nobody remembers anything like how hard you tried to get a high grade in that exam, or how much you know about the history of Ryunosuke Akutagawa… but this? This is it, Reika. This really leaves a mark."

She unwrapped the bright-yellow lollipop and slipped it into her mouth, the hard shell clacking against her teeth and the white stick poking out proudly.

"I'll do it. I'll become a Devil Hunter."