The train to Tokyo left at quarter past eight.
Kato Ginjiro knew this because Yūta had asked him three times during the walk from the hospital, and three times he had answered with the calm of someone who does not understand why the question needs repeating.
"Quarter past eight," he said for the third time, without looking up from the supermarket bag where a bun still remained.
"And how long does it take?"
"About two hours."
"And when we arrive, what do we do?"
"Leave our things. Rest. Get ready to go and find your companions."
Amane Yūta processed this as he walked.
"How many companions?"
"Four in total, including you. One is already in Tokyo. The other two are in Fukuoka."
"Fukuoka? Isn't that in the south?"
"Yes."
"So first Tokyo, then Fukuoka."
"Exactly."
Amane Yūta nodded slowly, watching the ground with the expression of someone arranging new information in a space that had not been prepared to receive it.
"And how many bases are there in total?"
Kato Ginjiro did look at him this time.
"How many questions have you got per night?"
"As many as I need."
The man considered that for a moment. Then he sighed in the specific way of someone who does not actually mind answering, but prefers to maintain the appearance that he does.
"Six bases," he said. "Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Kyoto. Tokyo is the central base, the largest, the one that coordinates all the others. The only two with a formal training academy are Tokyo and Kyoto."
"Academy?"
"Where new hunters go to learn. Where you're going."
Yūta looked at him.
"How long does it last?"
"Two years."
"Two years."
"Two years," confirmed Kato Ginjiro, with the patience of someone who already knows the next question is coming.
Yūta opened his mouth.
"And after two years—"
"After the train," said Kato Ginjiro. "One thing at a time."
The train was modern, quiet, with wide seats and large windows that showed Nagoya receding slowly and then the countryside opening up in the darkness. Yūta sat by the window without anyone telling him to, and stayed there looking out with his hands in his lap.
Kato Ginjiro fell asleep in exactly four minutes.
Yūta glanced at him from the corner of his eye. Then he looked back at the window.
Outside, the city lights were thinning and the nocturnal landscape was growing darker and more open. Nagoya was disappearing. Everything that had been his life until that morning — the park, the school, the hospital, Room 304 — was being left behind at two hundred kilometres an hour, without anyone having asked whether he was ready.
He was not ready.
But he had not been ready for any of the other things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, and somehow he was still here.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Opened them. Kept looking at the window.
Two hours later, the train stopped.
Tokyo at night was a thing Yūta had no frame of reference to process.
It was not that he had never seen photographs. He had seen photographs. He had thought that would prepare him for something. It had not prepared him for anything.
The station alone was already too much — the corridors, the staircases, the platforms, the specific number of people moving in every direction simultaneously with an efficiency that suggested they had been born knowing exactly where they were going. Kato Ginjiro walked ahead with the supermarket bags and Yūta's rucksack as though it were the most natural thing in the world, not looking back, assuming he was being followed.
"There can't be this many people," said Yūta, more to himself than to anyone.
Kato Ginjiro did not answer because he had already turned a corner.
Yūta turned the same corner.
There was another corner.
He turned that one too.
At some point between the third and fourth escalator, Kato Ginjiro was no longer ahead.
Yūta emerged onto the street wearing the specific expression of someone who is not going to admit they are lost, even though it is completely obvious that they are.
He looked left. People.
He looked right. More people.
He looked ahead. A quantity of people that made no geometric sense.
"This can't be right," he said.
He walked half a block in one direction. Then half a block in the opposite direction. Then he stopped in the middle of the pavement and took out his phone to call a number he did not have saved, because it had not occurred to him to ask for it before losing the man.
He put the phone away.
He looked around once more.
He found Kato Ginjiro standing in front of a food stall three metres away, buying something with the focus of someone for whom Tokyo was simply a place where he lived.
Yūta walked over to him.
"I got lost," he said.
"I know," said Kato Ginjiro, without turning round. "I saw you from here."
"And you weren't going to do anything?"
"You were going to find me anyway." He held something out wrapped in paper. "Do you want some takoyaki?"
Yūta looked at the takoyaki. Then at Kato Ginjiro. Then he took the takoyaki because he had not eaten properly and it was nearly midnight.
"Next time, tell me when you're turning a corner," he said.
"Next time, don't get lost," replied Kato Ginjiro, with his usual smile.
The area where the hunters lived in Tokyo did not appear on any map.
Not because it was invisible — though Kato Ginjiro mentioned in passing that those without the hunter's eye simply did not perceive it in the same way, which Yūta decided to set aside and process later along with all the other things he had been setting aside to process later. It was a wide compound, with low buildings and internal passageways and a quiet that contrasted sharply with the noise of the city beyond its boundaries, as though they belonged to different worlds.
Which, in a certain sense, was exactly the case.
Kato Ginjiro led him to a small but tidy room in the newcomers' wing and set the supermarket bags on the table with the ease of someone settling into a familiar place.
"In a bit we'll make a start," he said. "For now, sort out your room."
"And my companion? The one who's already here."
"He went to practise."
"At this hour?"
"He's been here two weeks. He has his own routine by now. You'll meet him tomorrow."
Yūta looked at the room. The bed, the window, the table, the supermarket bag with the half-eaten takoyaki. Everything completely new and completely foreign.
"Kato?"
The man was already at the door.
"Did I do the right thing, coming?"
Kato Ginjiro thought for a second. Not as though he did not know the answer, but as though he wanted to give the right answer rather than the easy one.
"You don't know yet," he said. "But I think so."
He closed the door.
Yūta set about sorting through his things.
Fukuoka smelled different from Nagoya and Tokyo. More humidity, more sea in the air, a temperature that was slightly warmer even at that hour of the afternoon. Yūta noticed it as soon as they stepped off the train and could not tell whether it was something real or whether he was simply beginning to pay attention to things he had never registered before.
They found them waiting at the station exit.
Two girls his age, with rucksacks and the shared expression of people who have been waiting a while and are not saying so, but it shows. The one on the left was taller, with black hair pulled back in a braid and a posture that suggested she was perfectly capable of standing for hours without it bothering her. The one on the right was slightly shorter, with dark brown hair loose and an expression Yūta could not quite read in that first second.
Kato Ginjiro raised a hand in greeting.
"Here we are," he said, with the bluntness specific to someone who sees no point in elaborate hellos.
The one with the braid looked at him.
"Twenty minutes late."
"The train was delayed."
"The train arrived on time. I checked."
Kato Ginjiro smiled without confirming or denying anything.
The girl with the loose hair looked at Yūta with a curiosity she did not entirely try to hide.
"You're the new one," she said.
"Amane Yūta," he replied. "From Nagoya."
"Shirogane Mei." She nodded towards her companion. "That's Tsukino Hina."
Tsukino Hina looked at him with the quick, direct assessment of someone accustomed to reading situations in a short time.
"Tsukino," she said, curtly.
"Amane," replied Yūta, in the same tone.
Kato Ginjiro introduced himself with the energy of someone who clearly did not need introducing, but did so out of courtesy.
"Kato Ginjiro. Master assigned to the group." He paused. "Right. Get ready. We'll go and have a look at a few things round here, then we set off for Tokyo."
Kato Ginjiro's phone rang before anyone could respond.
He took it from his pocket. Glanced at the screen for a second with an expression Yūta could not quite interpret — not exactly concern, but not his usual calm either. He answered, turning slightly away, as though he needed half a metre of distance for the conversation.
Whatever was said from the other end did not carry. Only a voice, shapeless.
Kato Ginjiro hung up. Put the phone away. Turned back.
"Change of plan," he said. "We'll be staying in Fukuoka a bit longer than expected."
Tsukino frowned.
"Why?"
"Something's come up."
"What's come up?"
"A remnant. In a house about ten minutes' walk from here." He paused. "Nothing you shouldn't be able to handle."
Shirogane looked at Tsukino. Tsukino looked at Kato Ginjiro with the expression of someone calculating whether it's worth pushing back.
She decided it was not.
Yūta, for his part, could not entirely conceal that he found the prospect interesting.
The house was two storeys, at the end of a quiet street that by that hour had little traffic. From the outside it looked ordinary — a standard Japanese construction, with an overgrown front garden and dark windows. But there was something in the air around it that Yūta noticed without yet being able to name it. A kind of weight that was not physical, but felt the same.
Kato Ginjiro stopped in front of the door.
"Tsukino. Shirogane. Your things."
The two looked at him.
"I beg your pardon?" said Tsukino.
"The three of you are going in." He gestured towards Yūta with a slight nod. "I want to see you work."
"With him?" said Tsukino, not troubling to moderate her scepticism.
"With him."
"Kato, he doesn't know how to use his basic abilities yet."
"I know."
"So—"
"Amane," said Kato Ginjiro, looking at him. "What did you do at the hospital when the remnant appeared?"
Yūta thought for a second.
"I hit it with a rod. And I drove the broken pieces into its eye."
"That," said Kato Ginjiro, turning back to Tsukino with the same calm. "Do that."
Tsukino looked at him for a moment.
"That isn't an answer."
"It's the only one I have right now."
Yūta recognised the phrase. He had said it himself two days ago in an entirely different context. He said nothing.
Tsukino exhaled slowly. She handed her rucksack to Kato Ginjiro with the precise gesture of someone who disagrees, but chooses her battles. Shirogane did the same with less visible drama.
"It doesn't seem particularly powerful," said Kato Ginjiro, looking at the house. "You should be able to manage it without trouble." He paused. "All three of you."
He opened the door. Watched them go in. Closed it behind them.
Inside it smelled of damp and something harder to name. The darkened windows let in very little street light and the interior of the ground floor was a succession of shadows that took the eyes time to adjust to.
Tsukino produced the axe.
It was small — it fit in one hand — with a short handle and a wide blade of a metal that was not quite the colour of ordinary steel. When she gripped it, something in it shifted subtly, as though it were responding to her touch.
"I'll handle this," she said, without looking at the other two.
"Tsukino," said Shirogane.
"Stay with Amane. If he doesn't know the basics, he'll get in the way."
Yūta did not reply. He watched Tsukino move towards the staircase with his usual calm expression, which was not indifference but something closer to taking note.
Shirogane turned to him.
"Don't take it personally," she said, quietly. "She's like this with everyone at first."
"I'm not taking it personally," said Yūta, which was true.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm processing," said Yūta. "There's rather a lot to process lately."
Shirogane nodded. She was about to say something more when the noise came from above — a dry, heavy impact that shook the ceiling slightly over their heads. Then another. Then the sound of something moving at a speed that did not match the size suggested by the noise.
Yūta looked at the staircase.
"We should—"
"Wait," said Shirogane, and in her voice there was something that went beyond caution.
Because at the foot of the staircase, descending slowly with a shape that took a moment to resolve into something recognisable, there was a figure.
Humanoid. Misshapen. With proportions that were not quite right at any point — arms too long, head too small, the movement of something that had forgotten how a body is supposed to work.
It stopped at the foot of the stairs.
It looked at them.
Shirogane stepped in front of Yūta in a movement that was simultaneously fluid and completely deliberate. In her hands appeared two fans — of the same strange metal as Tsukino's axe, with the edges of the ribs sharpened in a way that was not decorative.
"Amane," she said, without taking her eyes off the figure. "Stay back."
"I can help."
"You're already helping by not getting in the way."
The figure at the foot of the staircase tilted its head to one side at an angle that was not humanly possible.
And upstairs, in the second floor, the sounds of Tsukino's fight grew more intense.