Boogiepop Returns VS Imaginator Part 1 Page 4

  “Sorry, I. . . I didn't say anything,” Asukai replied quietly, and left the room.

  ***

  Soon, Asukai found himself walking through the evening streets again.

  For every alley he found, he stopped, and peered down it looking for some sort of sign. His eyes never missed a thing, like the eyes of a hawk searching for its next target.

  Then he heard a sound, like something falling over. Like the girl's moans, the sound was so faint nobody else around even noticed.

  “. . . . . . . . .”

  But he turned instantly, and went down the alley towards the sound's origin.

  He found some people there. Seven in all -- six boys and a girl.

  Something was clearly going on -- the girl's clothes were torn, her naked and vulnerable upper body exposed. Five of the boys stood around her, reaching towards her. One stood to the side, dazed, blood running from his mouth.

  “Well, this is easy to figure out!” Asukai's voice boomed.

  All the boys spun towards him.

  “-- ! Wh-who are you?!”

  “Just to make sure, I'd better ask. You there,” Asukai pointed to the odd boy out, the one who'd clearly been beaten. “Do you want to save this girl?”

  The confidence in Asukai's voice brought the boy out of his daze. He quickly nodded, “Y-yes.”

  “Then take her and run!” Asukai said, walking straight through the boys, taking the girl's arm, and pulling her out.

  “Hey!” The boys said, lurching towards Asukai.

  “Hmph,” he snorted, and did something to one of them, too fast for anyone to see.

  The boy fell over backwards.

  “----?!”

  The others shrank backwards, surprised. Asukai pushed the unresisting girl towards the bleeding boy. “Go! Get out of here!!”

  “Th-thank you,” the boy mumbled, scrambling away. He grabbed the girl's hand, and ran.

  “Wait!” the others shouted, but when they tried to follow, they found Asukai between them.

  “You wait,” he said, a fearless smile on his face.

  “Oh, yeah?!” They shouted, pulling knives from their pockets.

  Asukai didn't bat an eyelash at the blades. “I've got no grudge against you,” he said. “But I need a few more samples.”

  ***

  One minute later --

  Everyone else was sprawled on the ground. Only one of the boy thugs was still standing.

  Strangely enough, all of their injuries were caused by each other's knives.

  “Ah. . . ahhhh. . .” the last boy moaned, his teeth chattering together. Asukai came over to him, waving his right hand over his chest.

  “Wh-wh -- wh -- what did you do to them?”

  “You wouldn't understand. But I haven't hurt them. I've given them happiness.”

  His words, his calm, scared the boy more than anything else in his short life.

  “Wh-what the hell are you?”

  “Mm? Let's see. . . what was that name?” Asukai looked behind him.

  The girl hanging in the sky above him replied, “Imaginator!”

  “Right. ..that,” Asukai grinned. . . and his right hand snapped out towards the boy.

  There was a muffled scream.

  II

  You can fall in love if you like.

  All I can do is. . . pray that it does

  not destroy you both.

  -- Kirima Seiichi (VS Imaginator)

  Her name was Orihata Aya.

  She had big striking eyes, with large pupils -- though, they almost never looked at you directly. Very beautiful, but an incredibly reckless personality, and she always spoke in a very terse fashion. She was the same age as me, which is, well, fifteen, but there was a sort of sobriety about her that most adults never managed to develop.

  “Masaki, why are interested in me?”

  “Um, I just thought we could. . . I dunno, be friends, you know?”

  “You want me?”

  “Hunh?!”

  “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  “Hey, Orihata -- !”

  “'We can if you want to.”

  Yeah, many of our conversations were a lot like this.

  She seemed like she didn't even have friends at her school, and until she met me, I had my own doubts whether she'd ever had a normal conversation before.

  Oh, right. . . my name's Taniguchi Masaki, and as you can probably guess, Orihata and I. . . we're complete opposites. It's funny, though; Orihata and I met in the most messed up kind of way.

  At the time, I had just returned to Japan to get ready for high school after having lived abroad with my parents for a while, which was in this place called Phnom Penh. I was not really all that comfortable with my surroundings yet, and I'd heard horror stories from my parents about how other Japanese students had this tendency to keep their distance from returnees.

  Luckily, I also have a sister -- who isn't actually related to me -- who's spent her entire life in Japan. She said, “Sadly, that's true. They're all pathetic losers, afraid of anyone who does something different or thinks about crap in a different way. You'd better be ready.”

  So I was prepared for it, and just kept quiet.

  Even when I didn't feel like it, I always tried to help people, and I was careful to always maintain an easy-going attitude. And somehow, I ended up getting really popular with all of the girls in class. If the girls had something they didn't understand, or something in the study guide that didn't make sense, they'd always come to me for help instead of the teacher.

  “Oh, Masaki's so smart! Must be all that studying abroad.”

  I hadn't really studied abroad in the traditional sense of the term, but for some reason, the idea stuck.

  Honestly, I was a bit out of my league. I couldn't push the girls away, but the guys in my class -- in my entire school -- all started to look at me funny.

  By this point, high school entrance exams were right on top of us, so I wasn't exactly bullied by anyone (not much, anyway), but when I left school grounds, things would get a little. . . argumentative. In school, lowerclassmen would never bug an upperclassman, but once school was over, that line just vanished. I got glares from all directions.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't always have a group of girls crowding around me. All they ever did was just squeal and treat me like their own little toy; never like a true friend. I was pretty fed up with it by then, but I stuck with it.

  Then one day, I slipped up. Guess I must've been tired or something.

  I had to swing by the station, so I cut through a back alley, and found myself surrounded by five guys.

  “So, Mr. Study Abroad. You've been doing pretty well for yourself, haven't ya?”

  “Getting a little bit too much attention, see?”

  You'd think these guys would be dressed all trashy, but they weren't. No, they were all wearing pretty expensive jackets and didn't look like delinquents at all. So I hadn't realized what they were up to until it was too late and I was already surrounded. And by then, they already had switchblades open.

  I wasn't sure how old they were, but they had to have been younger than me. One of the kids' voices had barely even cracked. Still, that didn't make the others any less menacing.

  “Right. . . I'll be more careful.”

  I'd blown it. I'd been so careful not to let myself get into a situation like this that I had walked right smack dab into one. . . now they had me.

  “You'll be careful? How are you gonna do that?”

  “I'll try not to get as much attention?”

  They all cackled.

  Then suddenly, one shouted, “Don't you fuck with us!” And a hard punch connected with my cheek.

  I saw his fist coming for me easily enough, but I let him hit me. I swung my body back a little and softened the blow.

  The punch had connected enough to cut the inside of my cheek. There was blood in my mouth. . . but my teeth were fine. He hadn't hit any key points, so I wasn't e
ven shaken.

  This guy was nothing much. In Phnom Penh, I'd been studying a sort of undisciplined form of karate -- kind of a child's self-defense class, if you will -- for a pretty long time. I'd learned to size up my opponents just by looking at them. Their shoulders alone were a good indicator of just how much damage a person could really do.

  The most effective technique in this self-defense class was to yell for help as loud as you can. I considered this, briefly. If these were professional kidnappers, it might work, but this was Japan, and I felt that with opponents as inexperienced as these guys it would just provoke them. Plus, people tend to ignore cries for help anyway. The only real way to get anyone's attention is to just lie and scream, “Fire!”

  What really had me worried was that these guys probably went to the same school as me. If I kicked their asses, they'd just come back in larger numbers, and then the trouble would never let up.

  And just as I was trying to figure out if hitting them four or five times would settle things or not. . .

  “Hey,” someone said.

  She was talking to all of us at once. Both the attackers and little ol' me -- the victim.

  “That looks boring.”

  Surprised, we turned and found a girl just standing there.

  The first thing I noticed was her unruly hair, which seemed to have been just left there at a sort of arbitrary length. It seemed to flow out of her.

  We were in a dirty back alley that stank of piss and ditch water. The sky was dark and cloudy, and I was hunched down like a sad frightened rabbit.

  No matter how you looked at it, my first meeting with Orihata Aya was. . . anything but perfect.

  ***

  “. . . . . . . . .”

  I gaped at her for what seemed like an eternity.

  The girl with her arbitrary hair never even glanced at me. She just walked briskly towards us.

  “Wh-who are you? Study Abroad's girlfriend?” one snarled.

  She didn't even blink. “What is your purpose? What failing of his caused this behavior?” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

  “Hunh? You don't know this guy?”

  “What do you think you're doing here?” asked another classmate.

  “I asked for a reason,” she insisted.

  “Hey, this guy thinks he's Don Juan. Looking like this, tricking girls into falling for him.”

  Obviously lies, but I fought back the anger.

  “Hunh. . .” she said, and at last looked at me.

  For some reason, I found myself glaring back at her.

  She frowned. She looked at me like I puzzled her.

  I thought she was pitying me, which made me angrier. I could tell my expression was growing harsher as I fought against my feelings.

  She frowned harder, put her head to one side, then sort of drooped before looking back at the group around me.

  “So, he stole your girlfriends, then? The cause of your anger is sexual frustration?”

  She didn't even bat an eye at what she was saying.

  It was so out there that we all just sort of stared.

  “Uh. . . what? What did she say?”

  “I'm asking if this attack is a way of forgetting that your sexual partners all hate you.”

  Her tone was so level, it couldn't be taken as deliberate provocation. She was just throwing the words out there.

  They stood silently for a moment, but then their faces turned red, their fists shook. They were getting angry.

  “You. . . bitch!” They all went for her, reaching out to grab her. And she did something none of us could have predicted.

  She grabbed her own shirt, and tore it off.

  Her bare chest hit the chilly night air.

  It was pale and beautiful, as if it was drinking in all the light that shone around it.

  “If you have frustrated desires, I can fulfill them,” she said, still completely calm. The thing is, there was much more expression on her face just moments before when she had looked at me. At this moment, it was like she was wearing a mask.

  “Uuuum. . .”

  “H-hey. . .”

  The boys froze in mid-lunge, bug-eyed.

  “Whoa, wait a minute -- !” I said, flustered. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but I was not about to stand by and let them do as they pleased with her.

  But at that moment, a loud voice came from the far end of the alley.

  “Well, this is easy to figure out!”

  We spun around, and there was a young man in white clothes standing there.

  He strode towards us confidently.

  “ -- Wh-who are you?!”

  “Just to make sure, I'd better ask. You there,” he pointed at me. “Do you want to save this girl?”

  I quickly nodded, “Y-yes.”

  “Then take her and run!” he snapped, strode right over to her, and took the bare-chested girl by the arm.

  “Hey!” one of the boys said, and moved towards him, but with blinding speed he reached out to the boy's chest. . . and that alone sent him flying.

  Even I couldn't see what he'd done. This guy was something else.

  While I was still stunned, he shoved the girl towards me.

  “Go! Get out of here!!”

  I managed to say, “Th-thank you,” as I took the girl's arm and ran. She followed, unresisting.

  When we were almost on the main street, I quickly shrugged off my jacket and covered her body with it.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She seemed a little out of it. She stared back at me, and asked, “Why?”

  “Eh?”

  “Didn't you hate me?” She looked puzzled again.

  I didn't get it, but I couldn't leave that man to handle those boys all by himself, so I put her on a bench in front of the station, which seemed safe enough, told her to wait for me, and hurried back.

  But halfway there a hand grabbed me from behind.

  I turned around, and it was the young man.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling. There was not a scratch on him. No dirt. . . not even so much as a wrinkle on his crisp white suit. Who was this guy?!

  “Are. . . you okay?!”

  “Yeah, it's all taken care of. I doubt they'll bother you again,” he said airily.

  I gaped at him. I'd been gone less than two or three minutes. And there'd been five of them.

  “Umm, y-you. . .”

  “I think you ought to worry more about her than me. How's she doing?”

  “Um, I don't. . .”

  “Better hurry back. The girl's much less secure than she looks. Her roots and stem have merged, and you can't tell them apart. Plus, she's got very few leaves and just a hardened bud in place of a flower.”

  He'd lost me completely. All I could manage was a dumbfounded, “What?”

  “It's not important. If she says horrible things to you, I wouldn't pay too much attention. That's the trick for getting along with her. Bye.” Leaving this further cryptic comment behind him, the man in white turned and walked away.

  I stood there stunned for a moment, but soon collected myself, and hurried back to the girl.

  She was sitting in exactly the same position as I'd left her, with both hands on the front of the jacket, holding it closed.

  “-- Um, are you feeling better?” I asked rather stupidly, unable to think of anything else.

  “. . . . . . . .” She didn't answer.

  I didn't know what to do, but now that I thought about it, she had effectively rescued me, so I said, “Uh, th-thanks. For, uh. . . for back there.”

  “Why?” she asked, looking up at me. She looked puzzled again.

  Man, I couldn't get this conversation rolling at all.

  “Well, you saved me, didn't you?” I said, smiling hopefully.

  Her eyes widened, then for some reason she looked down, and mumbled, “. . . I thought you hated me.”

  “Hunh?” I gaped back at her. “Why? Why would I hate you?”

  “I can't be h
ated by anyone. Not by any normal humans,” she said oddly intense. Her eyes were serious.

  “. . . I don't hate you.”

  “But you glared at me. . .” she said, very sadly.

  “I did? Oh. . . but that wasn't about you. I just was angry with myself, so. . . I. . . I mean. . .” I stumbled, trying to clear things up.

  Still looking at the ground, she whispered, “I'm sorry.”

  “Why are you apologizing? It's all my fault! I was worried that you hated me!”

  She looked up. “-- Why?”

  “I mean, that was pretty pathetic back there, right? That's why I was angry at myself. Nothing to do with you. I was so angry because I was sure you hated me.” The more I babbled, the more pathetic I came across.

  She quietly watched me flail about, but said nothing.

  “And then because I couldn't make up my mind, you. . .” I trailed off, shoulders slumping. “But it's over now. I'll pay for your clothes. Um. . .”

  I reached for my wallet, and remembered that the reason I'd been heading for the station in the first place was that I had no money and needed to swing by an ATM.

  “Ugh, crap. ..the ATM's already closed. . . !”

  “Don't worry about money. I have some,” she answered as she stood up.

  “But I can't just do nothing. . .”

  “Really. If you could lend me this jacket. . . I'll give it back.”

  “Oh, no -- take it! But that doesn't really pay you back at all. . . could you at least give me your address? Or phone number? I'll call you later and I’ll pay you for the clothes then. . .”

  “. . . . . . . .” She stared at me levelly. I was taller than her, so she had to look up at me slightly. It could be taken as a glare.

  “Ah, no, I don't mean it like that. Uh. . . if you'd prefer to call me. . . yeah, we should do it that way.”

  “Orihata.”

  “Mm?”

  “My name. Orihata Aya. You are. . . ?”

  “Oh, uh, I'm Taniguchi Masaki.”

  “Masaki. . . that's a nice name,” and at last she smiled. A very small smile, the corners of her mouth turning up ever so slightly, but there was enough power in it to grab me by the heart.