The sky over Tokyo had collapsed onto the city like a sheet of dirty lead. Behind the glass, the neon lights of Akasaka were being washed away by the rain; the asphalt was choking on moisture and the exhaust fumes of a million tailpipes. Outside, it was loud, chaotic. But inside... Inside, it was as silent and cool as a crypt.
Jin was buried deep in his Italian leather armchair, watching the ice slowly melt in his crystal tumbler. The amber whiskey left oily trails down the sides of the glass. The air in the room had been scrubbed clean; it smelled of expensive leather, old paper, and a faint hint of sandalwood. Across from him, the mahogany-paneled, wide-screen Yashima Chromax television was on. The volume was low, but the images cast a flickering blue-white light that tore through the room's dimness.
"...Confirmed that the body parts found in Saitama Forest belong to the 11-year-old elementary school student," the anchorwoman said. Her face was caked in powder, but it couldn't hide the horror in her eyes. "The perpetrator is a 16-year-old high school student, identified only as 'A'. According to police sources, hours after the murder, the suspect attacked three other schoolgirls at random with a hammer he found on the street." Jin brought the glass to his lips but didn't drink.
The image cut. A shaky, amateur camera recording outside the police station filled the screen. In the frame, a boy with a gray jacket pulled over his head, hands cuffed behind his back, was being hurried into a vehicle by two officers. His face was hidden by the state—obscured by a thick, digital mosaic.
Jin's eyes narrowed. He focused on the boy's shoulders. They weren't slumped. He wasn't trembling. There was none of that characteristic "withdrawal" reflex that signaled fear or remorse. On the contrary... His shoulders were loose. His stride was easy. He even held his head slightly high as he ducked into the cruiser. Beneath that pixelated mask, Jin could see the smirk. It was the posture of Impunity.
"Juvenile Law Article 41," the anchor continued. "As the suspect is a minor, he will not be tried in an adult court. His name will remain sealed. Experts suggest that after a few years of rehabilitation, he could be reintegrated into society..."
Jin set the glass down on the coffee table. CLACK. The sound cracked through the room's silence like a whip. Something inside Jin—something older than Samael's blood, something far more human—began to boil. This boy had beaten the system. He had dismantled another human life just to see "how it would feel," and now he was hiding behind the skirts of the law, blowing raspberries at the world.
"He is just a child, isn't he?"
Klara's voice broke into Jin's thoughts. She stood in the shadows of the hallway, wearing a clean, grey tracksuit. Her skin had smoothed over as she healed, but her posture still held the tension of a startled animal. Jin didn't look away from the screen. "Biological age: 16," Jin said. His voice was as cold as the grinding of glaciers. "But he is no child, Klara. He is a predator. And right now... right now, the state is feeding the wolf to protect the sheep." Jin stood up. He didn't turn off the TV. The red taillights of the police cruiser were fading into the distance on the screen.
"Where are you going?" Klara asked, sensing the shift in Jin's aura. The air in the room had grown heavy, electric.
Jin didn't answer. He walked to the built-in closet in the foyer. He didn't reach for his black tactical gear. He didn't take the obsidian pistol. Tonight, he would not be a soldier. He pulled on a plain, dark navy raincoat. He slipped black leather gloves onto his hands. Then, from the bottom shelf where the garage tools were kept, he picked something up. A Construction Hammer with a heavy iron head and a rusted tip.
Klara swallowed hard and took a step back when she saw the tool in Jin's hand. It was the same murder weapon mentioned on the news. "The Law," Jin said, sliding the hammer into his deep pocket, "is a contract between people. 'You don't kill me, I don't kill you.' But that boy... He unilaterally terminated the contract." Jin turned toward the door. He caught his reflection in the hallway mirror. For a split second, his pupils constricted into vertical, predatory slits. "Those who break the contract do not deserve the protection of the law."
He turned to Klara. "Get ready," he said. "You're coming with me."
"Me?" Klara blinked in surprise. "What will I do?"
Jin opened the door. The damp wind from outside rushed in. "You will watch," Jin said. "I am going to give you your first lesson in your new world: Justice is not a piece of paper handed out in a courtroom. Justice is sometimes a lump of iron descending in a dark alley."
Klara hesitated, then nodded. She stepped into the dark corridor after him. As the elevator descended, a single image burned in Jin's mind: That pixelated, grinning face. And tonight, he was going to erase the pixels.
Just past midnight, in front of the safe house in the Nerima District, the yellow glare of a streetlamp washed over the windshield of a police cruiser. Inside, two officers were drinking coffee from a thermos, listening to the static crackle of the radio. For them, this watch was nothing more than a boring chore. Yet five meters above them, on the second floor of the house, a silent apocalypse was about to break.
Kazuya lay on his bed, the headphones of his Sound-Runner clamped over his ears. Heavy metal blasted into his skull, isolating him from the outside world. He had a meeting with the pedagogues tomorrow. He had memorized his lines: "I regret it. I was overwhelmed by my father's pressure. I heard voices." Lying was so easy. Adults were so ready to believe whatever they wanted to hear.
Kazuya buried his face in the pillow and smirked. He remembered the sound that came from those girls' skulls. A wet thud. Suddenly, the air in the room shifted. He thought the music had slowed down, like the Walkman's batteries were dying, but it wasn't that. The temperature in the room had plummeted. A strange smell hit his nose. Rain? Ozone? And... Metal?
Kazuya pulled off the headphones. He sat up. The window was open. The curtain was twitching slightly, though there was no wind. "Mom?" he called out. His mother didn't answer. From the darkness, a hand—black as a shadow—shot out. Before Kazuya could even inhale, the hand clamped over his mouth and nose like a hydraulic press. The scream knotted in his throat.
Jin stood at the head of the bed. He wore no mask, but the darkness obscured his features. In that moment, the true scent hit Jin's nose. The biological signature he couldn't get through the TV, but could feel now that he was in the room with his prey. Moldy Sugar and Rotting Fish. This was the smell of pure, unadulterated arrogance. There was no fear. Just the sickly sweet, nauseating stench radiated by a rotten soul.
Jin looked deep into the boy's eyes. His pupils went vertical. "No sound," Jin said. His voice was like a knife drawn across a whetstone. With his other hand, he pressed against the boy's carotid artery. A simple biological lock. He cut the blood flow. Kazuya's eyes rolled back. His body went slack. Jin hoisted the unconscious form over his shoulder like a sack of grain. He moved to the window. Below, on the branch of the old oak tree in the garden, Klara was waiting. Jin silently passed the boy down to her. The cops kept sipping their coffee. They had no idea the monster upstairs had just been swallowed by a bigger one.
When Kazuya regained consciousness, the world was spinning. The first thing he registered was the intense smell filling his nose—rusty iron and salt water. It felt like a tomb at the bottom of the ocean. He opened his eyes. His vision was blurred. Above him, an industrial bulb swung from a bare wire. The light wasn't yellow; it was a sickly mustard color. It illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air, making the shadows writhe.
He tried to move. SCREEE. The sound didn't come from his body, but from the chair beneath him. He was strapped to a heavy metal chair, rusted and bolted to the floor. Duct tape secured not just his wrists, but his fingers, individually, to the armrests. His torso and ribcage were wrapped so tight he could barely breathe. The grey tape over his mouth was stretched to the point of tearing his lips.
Across from him lay darkness. Out of that darkness, two silhouettes emerged. One was a woman leaning against the wall, her face as white as lime. She couldn't take her eyes off Kazuya, but she was clutching her stomach. The other... The Nightmare that had taken him from his room.
Jin reached for the zipper of the canvas bag on the floor. ZZZZZIP. The sound of the zipper echoed in the silent hangar like the opening of a body bag. Jin reached inside. The sound of metal scraping metal. And what he pulled out froze Kazuya's blood. A Construction Hammer, its handle wrapped in black tape, its iron head scarred with scratches, its tip caked with concrete dust and dried blood.
Kazuya's eyes bulged. He made muffled, animalistic grunts behind the tape. He began to thrash in the chair, but it didn't budge a millimeter. Jin grabbed the chair and spun it to face him. Under the light, his face was as expressionless as a statue. There was no anger. No hatred. Only a terrifying calm.
"Juvenile Law, Article 41," Jin said. His voice echoed off the hangar's metal walls. "It protected you from prison. It protected you from the gallows. It hid you from the angry glare of society." Jin weighed the hammer in the air. He stroked the cold metal surface with his thumb. "But that law left its jurisdiction outside that door, Kazuya. This is not a courtroom. This is my world."
Jin leaned in. He brought his face close to the boy's sweaty, pimpled skin. "What did you feel when you hit that girl's skull?" he whispered. "The resistance of the bone? That cracking sound? Or was it just the power?"
Kazuya was crying. Tears streamed down his cheeks, soaking into the tape, running down his neck. His pants were soaked with urine. Jin took a deep breath. The scent radiating from Kazuya had changed. The smell of "Arrogant Moldy Sugar" was gone, replaced by the nose-burning, acidic stench of Pure Ammonia. "Fear," Jin said, satisfied by the scent. "You are trembling down to your marrow. That little girl trembled like this too, didn't she?"
Jin stood up. He didn't even look at Klara. "Watch, Klara. This is not brutality. This is an equation."
Jin raised the hammer. Not fast. Slowly. Calculating the gravity and the weight of the metal. The target was not the head. The target was Kazuya's right kneecap.
THWACK.
The sound... The sound was wet and solid. Not like a watermelon hitting concrete. Like a solid porcelain vase being pulverized by a sledgehammer. Kazuya's patella shattered beneath the skin. Bone fragments scattered into the meat like shrapnel. Kazuya's body bowed taut like a string. If not for the tape over his mouth, his scream would have blown out the windows. But no sound came out. Only a muffled, horrific GURK from his throat. His eyes rolled back; the veins in his neck bulged like worms.
Jin didn't wait. "One," he said. "That is how you broke that elementary student's leg. Because she couldn't walk, she tried to crawl away."
Jin raised the hammer again. This time, the left knee. Kazuya shook his head violently. He was begging. Screaming "Don't" with his eyes.
CRACK-SHH.
The second blow was harder. Kazuya's left leg fell to the side at a grotesque, unnatural angle, as if everything below the knee didn't exist. The boy was about to pass out. The pain had exceeded his brain's processing capacity. Jin pressed his hand against the boy's collarbone. "No," Jin said. "No passing out. Those girls didn't get to pass out. You will stay awake."
Jin pointed the hammer at the boy's hands, those hands taped to the armrests. "These hands..." Jin said. "The hands that held that hammer, that pulled that trigger." Kazuya tried to pull his fingers back, but the tape was too tight. He could only scrape his nails against the metal. Jin didn't raise the hammer. He simply placed the head of it over the boy's right hand. And leaned on it with his full body weight. Then, a sudden, sharp strike.
KRT.
The metacarpal bones were crushed simultaneously. It was no longer a hand. It was just a bloody pulp inside a skin bag. Kazuya's body convulsed, shook, and then stopped. His brain was about to pull the breaker due to the pain. Klara gripped the wall. She was biting her lips to keep from vomiting. What she was seeing was pure violence, but the expression on Jin's face... It wasn't the face of a killer; it was the face of an engineer fixing a broken machine.
Jin dropped the hammer to the floor. He stepped in front of the boy. Kazuya's eyes were half-open. He couldn't see the light. He could only see the pain. "Killing you," Jin said, brushing the boy's sweaty hair back, "is a reward, Kazuya. But those girls didn't get a reward." Jin placed his right hand in the center of the boy's chest. He felt the heartbeat. Erratic, weak, terrified beats. Then he placed his left hand on the boy's neck, on that fragile point where the spine meets the brain.
"It is finished."
A sudden movement. Not as loud as the hammer blow. Just like the snapping of a dry twig. SNAP. Kazuya's head fell to the side. The fear in his eyes froze. The convulsions in his body ceased. Silence fell over the hangar once more. Only the sound of the waves and Klara's rapid breathing remained.
Jin slowly peeled off his gloves. He placed the bloody hammer in the corpse's lap, as if it were a part of him. He pulled a white handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. He turned to Klara.
"Are you ready?"
"For what?" Klara asked, her voice trembling.
"To exhibit this painting," Jin said. "The world must see that justice is still breathing."
Jin picked up the bag next to the body. Kazuya's lifeless form sat in the chair like a broken puppet. "Now," Jin said, walking toward the hangar door. "Let's go and write a letter to Tokyo in blood."
Just before dawn, the white marble pillars of the Tokyo Court of Justice gleamed in the moonlight. This was one of Japan's most protected, most sacred buildings; the symbol of justice. The square was silent; the officer in the guard booth was dozing off. Jin's van pulled up to the edge of the curb.
Jin opened the rear doors. He shouldered Kazuya's lifeless body. Moving like a shadow, he ascended those massive marble stairs. He left the body right in front of the main entrance, at the foot of the Statue of Justice. The corpse was positioned on its knees, head bowed. As if begging for forgiveness.
Jin smeared his hand with the fresh blood seeping from the corpse. He walked to the white marble pillar. No brush. Just his fingers and the criminal's blood. Starting from the level of the corpse's head, Jin drew a Thick, Straight Red Line down the wall, pointing directly at the body. It meant: "The Perpetrator is Here."
Next to the line, in large, savage, dripping letters, he wrote a single word: JUSTICE.
And beneath the word, he signed it with the mark of his organization, "The Scent Behind the Masks": A vertical line intersected by a horizontal Eye Shape. (The All-Seeing Judge).
Jin stepped back. He looked at his work. When morning came... When the officers arrived for work... When the families of those dead girls received the news... Everyone would see this message. The state would be shamed. The police would be terrified. But the people... When the people looked at that bloody writing, they would not feel horror; they would feel peace.
Jin walked down the stairs. He got into the van. Klara was in the driver's seat. Her hands were gripping the wheel tight.
"Did you see?" Jin asked, buckling his seatbelt.
"I saw," Klara said. Her voice was no longer shaking. "While the Law slept, Justice was awake."
Jin looked in the rearview mirror one last time at the bloody scene he had left behind. "Let's go," he said.