The van had broken down, stalling right on the outskirts of the Sakuhata district that bordered the major traffic-congested road. The engine had already been giving out a violent and uneasy bang with each gear shift, and it refused to move at all around twenty minutes into the hour-long drive. The other cars that passed by blew hot dust into the mouth of the policeman on the ground, tangling his hands in the ugly wires that were bunched up underneath the vehicle. It was his own van. He’d let it go with the recent crimewave that left him driving up and down the major roads without time to stop for maintenance, and now he was paying the price.

  There was a drugged woman in the back of his van.

  She stirred, and a line of drool made its way down her slack lip. Her name was Rin, but right now she couldn’t remember that at all. Her face was pressed against the torn-up seat, leaving behind a sweaty indent in the leather, the rest of her awkwardly crammed lengthways into the back seat. She was larger than the vehicle had been designed to transport—broad-shouldered, tall, and long-limbed—and her knees were almost bunched up to her chest.

  She had been drugged since around the time the van had begun its trip, but even the monstrous dose of ketamine the officers had jabbed into her neck was wearing off by now. The hum of the engine and the slow drive had lulled her into a daze, but now that there was talking and a change in movement, she began to stir.

  “She’s waking up, sir!”

  The Neuropath Control Officer white-knuckling the steering wheel in the front seat was young, probably a trainee. His chin was lightly stubbled with uneven hairs and his voice cracked on every second word.

  “Doesn’t matter, Sanoyama.”

  From under the van came more sounds of shuffling.

  “If she gets up then jab her again.”

  Sanoyama frantically opened up the glove compartment, drawing out two empty needles with the plungers pushed down to the hilt. He seemed out of his depth. Rin could smell the bitter tang of his mounting fear making its way to her nose, drying out her throat.

  “We’re out of doses, sir.”

  She stirred again, her eyeballs slowly rolling down from her skull. The interior was dark and fuzzy through her vision, and she was beginning to grow aware of what was going on around her.

  Somewhere out of the window there was a guttering light, a streetlight that was running out of power. She watched as it flickered almost to nothingness before stabilizing hesitantly. It brought to mind the image of a dying firefly, trying to give out one last flare before being crushed by a swatter. She understood that kind of feeling.

  Sanoyama rifled through the glovebox nervously, doing his best to distract himself from the movement he could hear in the backseat. Her attention was broken by him turning on his torch as he pulled out a small stack of fragile, rough-edged papers. They were bound together with a paperclip, and on the first page there was a poorly-printed mugshot of Rin’s face. The ink had bled, and it wasn’t very flattering.

  It also looked outdated. The photo was of a gaunt-faced, pale-haired woman (the exact color not communicated through black and white print), with eyes too shadowed to discern their shape or shade. If compared with Rin’s current slumped-over form, a striking difference was the scar on her face—an ugly thing that had taken out a chunk of her left upper lip, pulling up the skin as it healed to expose the sharp teeth and gums underneath.

  He flicked through the file, the torchlight searing into Rin’s retinas. Her eyes reflected the light back like a cat. Her red irises were reminiscent of cigarette ends.

  “S-so. This isn’t your first time. Killing someone.”

  The words he said were definitely Japanese, but it took a few moments for them to register. Rin struggled to focus on the open papers Sanoyama was trying to shove in her face.

  It sounded like he was trying to talk down to her—make himself feel less afraid. If she had been any more functional, Rin would have spat in his face.

  “Adult ketsujin female, birthdate unknown, 4th Rank neuropath,” Sanoyama read out loud. His gaze flicked up and down the lines of tightly-packed text.

  “Arrested for armed robbery, resisting arrest, lack of neuropathic license, and…eight counts of second-degree murder. That’s…Kohei Fukuyama, Ryota Naokawa, Kazuhiko Ochi, Kenji Harimoto, Hiroki Kuga, Junpei Ushimaru, Yuki Horioka, and Osamu Masato.”

  She didn’t blink.

  “So…eight completely different people. No rhyme or reason to it, just murder, plain and simple,” Sanoyama continued, with his voice becoming officious as if he was quoting a newspaper article.

  “Are you proud of this sad trail you’ve left behind? Did it….well, did it get you what you wanted? You’re going to die now. There isn’t a lawyer out there that could polish this file up. You can’t talk good about a ketsujin, after all. All the same.”

  The more Sanoyama spoke, the softer and shakier his voice became—as if he was frightened of speaking too loudly, in case his disapproving words would cause her to leap up and tear out his throat.

  “Y-you’re…just killing and hunting like a dog.”

  But his statements weren’t even correct. Rin didn’t expect him to understand her motives—she doubted the information was in the file, considering she’d never given an official statement—but she dismissed him internally. He was a simple human who knew nothing and couldn’t even see basic patterns.

  You’re all the dogs, she thought.

  Every one of you, you’re all just fucking working dogs. You all think the same things, don't you? You couldn't stand it if people branded you a killer, if they brought you to my level. So you talk and talk, and talk over the sound of you pulling the trigger, so you don't even need to hear it fire.

  She parted her lips slowly, feeling the sting of stale air on her lacerated lips.

  “Filth,” she rasped.

  Sanoyama flinched back, dropping the file like it burned him. For just a moment, a flash of anger eclipsing his fear of her.

  “What the hell did you call me?”

  “Sanoyama—”

  The young officer was interrupted by his superior climbing back into the van, slamming the door behind him. “Don’t engage with her. I told you to jab her if she wakes up again!”

  “We’re out of sedatives, sir. Uh, how is the van?”

  “It’s done for, but we should be able to drive to the station at least. Write up someone else to take her, would you?”

  The van rocked as Sanoyama turned the key, and Rin felt her limp body roll forward slightly to press into the front seats from behind. It was all riling her up—the condescending hate, the foul-smelling leather, the bite of the silver-coated cuffs that were digging into her wrists. They bore old, thin scars underneath the new lacerations, from previous arrests, from the same mistake in a different time.

  “Is there even anybody else available?” Sanoyama asked.

  “We can radio back, though I doubt it. Not right now.” The man emitted a rough bark of a laugh. “There’s already been some new reports this evening on the other side of the city.”

  “Even Higouya district, sir?”

  It seemed almost unthinkable that the richest sector of the city could have been the source of a rogue neuropath report, but the officer waved his hand in response.

  “Some pyrokinetic starting a bar fight and burnin’ down the entire place. It’s always the same, they get a shiny license and think officers will turn away their eyes just because they’re justified to be using an ability. Psychic arson is still arson, eh? That flimsy self-defense argument won’t fly in court, I’m sure.” With a scathingly bitter tone of voice, the man added, “She’s lucky to be rich and pretty.”

  They turned into the south end of Sakuhata. Rin’s fingers curled down, grinding the stiffened joints as she began to tap on the metal cuffs. It let out a soft tink each time.

  Tink tink tink

  She tried to keep up a steady rhythm, finding herself hyperaware of the blood slowly pumping faster through her veins. She was coming alive again—her dry mouth filling with saliva, a heavy nausea making purchase in her stomach. It was still preferable over the disorientating drugs.

  Tink tink tink

  “We’re out of fuel too, sir.”

  ”Y'don’t say, you idiot.” The man’s rough voice sounded sharp and clear to her now. “It’s always something with you, right? Keep your blind eyes on the road.”

  He leaned over, ignoring Sanoyama’s plea to listen, felt around for the spare fuel canister hidden underneath the seat behind him, and his fat fingers brushed against her leg.

  Tink tink,

  Tink

  A hitch—a hiccup in the beat.

  Rin suddenly moved and swung her bound arms around, latching onto the man’s hand like a vice. He let out a cry and tried to hold onto the seat, only for her to slowly drag him forwards, closer to her head. “Sanoyama, DO something, don’t—jab her!” he barked and his arm trembled, trying to withstand her grip. “I told you to keep her down no matter w—”

  “There wasn’t anything left! Wait, I’m driving—”

  The van swerved as the young officer panicked. Slowly, Rin began to twist her hands in opposite directions, and underneath her grip she could feel the skin slowly tearing off the muscle and bone, splitting from the fascia like layers of fabric being peeled apart. The man screamed again, and his fingers flexed wildly, but he couldn’t wrench himself away.

  Rin used the officer’s weight to pull herself upright. They were face-to-face now, and he reeked of adrenaline and alcohol and sweat to her hypersensitive nose. His eyes were so wide, she could look right into them and see the twisted surface of the iris reflecting back that last fleck of hope she had to look at every time she killed a person. The reflex of a brain refusing that its owner could die.

  She lunged. She tore into the man’s throat. The skin and ligaments were soft between her teeth, and Rin slowly began to pull her head back as she tore out a chunk of the man’s esophagus. Dark, viscous blood spilled down her lips and settled into the cracks of her scar, filling her mouth, dyeing her yellowed teeth red.

  He struggled. It was futile.

  Rin swallowed in short bursts, gagging on the slimy and chewy organ. It tasted like veal. Sanoyama was spinning the wheel wildly this way and that, too frozen in fear to reach behind and extricate the corpse of his superior. As she dropped her grip, the dead officer slid down and rolled into the footwell of the backseat, streaking fluid all down the seat.

  Her hands gripped onto the driver’s seat, and slowly, Rin began to pull herself forwards. Sanoyama was sitting perfectly upright like there was a metal rod in his spine. As she breathed down his neck, Rin could hear his pulse pounding loudly enough for her to hear- ba-badum, ba-badum, ba-badum. Her vision was too bright, and every light source had a hazy aura around it.

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  “Stop the car.” The blood wet her throat, making speech more cooperative.

  Sanoyama’s hands were trembling upon the steering wheel. As his round, wet eye rolled around, trying to look at her without moving his head, Rin grabbed onto the neck of his shirt.

  “I said brake, human!”

  Before she could dig her nails into his spine—something heavy hit the van and made it swerve over the road, the doors causing ear-shattering vibrations to travel right into Rin’s skull. Sanoyama screamed and Rin was flung violently back before her head collided into the window with a bang, and the impact stunned her for a moment. Bright, iridescent light bloomed across her field of vision.

  Someone’s attacking the van. Not more police, she could hear no sirens. The banging and shuffling above them suggested that a person had just jumped onto the moving vehicle. She saw the ceiling denting underneath their knees.

  A hired mercenary would rack up any number of enemies—it could have been anyone, any abandoned lover, any halved twin, anyone consumed with revenge, and she knew it, which was why Rin’s head filled with a numb acceptance. It could have been a nokemono, a gang member. She’d offended more than enough of them over the course of her life. She’d rather die honorably to one of their bullets than rot away in a jail cell.

  “Oh, god, please,” Sanoyama begged. “Please, no. This is my first week. Did you know that?” He turned to Rin, hands already off the wheel. “God it’s my first week! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry sorry sorry!”

  Uncontrolled, the van was now speeding towards a turn in the road, at the end of which was a wall of some tall concrete factory building. He was too locked up in fear to take his foot off the pedal.

  Your first week and my last, eh?

  As the wall became so close it took up the entire windshield’s view, the van tilted.

  It tilted up, and Rin felt gravity reclaim her as the entire vehicle was wrenched backwards and out of its speeding momentum. The tires burned upon the dirty road. With a terrible screeching noise, it rocked upon the back wheels before it fell upon its side and spun out of control as it was thrown, and Rin felt herself violently colliding with the door for the third time before she blacked out.

  She came to moments later.

  The wheels were still spinning like the convulsions of a fresh corpse, giving off a high-pitched whirring sound. Blood from her nose covered the lower half of her face, and it made a steady drip onto the metal. The van was completely upside down.

  “…”

  Rin was sprawled flat across the inside roof, and Sanoyama knelt a little ahead of her—sobbing, shaking, covering his head, but the noises he made reached her ears through a blanket of tinnitus.

  Through the vomiting exhaust and the stink of abraded rubber Rin could smell the scent of a third person snaking in from outside. She tried to lift her head, but flopped back down bonelessly, a haze threatening to overtake her vision. The front driver’s door was yanked open and in came a pale hand, reaching for Sanoyama’s trembling form and pulling him out by the collar of his shirt.

  “Please!!”

  From where she was so awkwardly laid all Rin could see was the officer’s kicking shoes as he was raised off the ground, trying to find purchase.

  “No please do—don’t do—I’m just the driver I’ll let you in I’ll let you! I’ll—”

  A soft and wet crunch bookended the man’s pleas. Bright blood poured down onto the road and splattered unevenly before his body was tossed away.

  Once again she attempted to lift herself off the ground, and trembling Rin began to lean upon her bruised elbows as she reached, pulling herself forward, glass from the broken side window leaving behind long lacerations across her stomach. There was no longer any specific point of pain in her body. Her muscles ached, her head rang each with blink and labored breath, and her face was warm with her own blood.

  Rin’s nails became ragged and chipped against the tarmac as she crawled slowly out of the upturned vehicle. The midnight air was fresh and cold away from the smoke.

  Though her eyes could see further in the dark than any human, the third person she had smelled earlier was standing directly in front of a streetlight, causing her to squint. As she looked up, the harsh white glow radiated around their short, slender figure in rays. A little reminiscent of a full-body halo.

  He was crooning a soft and lilting tune.

  He spun, a wave of pale hair flaring out behind him like wings, and began to hop and step away, in an unsteady and hesitant pattern. With each movement the stranger flung out a pair of spindly arms and looked up at the stars, swaying to an imaginary beat.

  Dancing. Rin stared, and she didn’t move. She wasn’t immobile out of fear. There was a strange and oppressive weight swallowing her ability to pull herself further forward.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven…hallowed be thy name~”

  In a silky, soothing, mellow voice, tripping sweetly over the uneasy melody, the stranger began to sing.

  “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…”

  Tap tap tap went his bare feet upon the road, and clap went his hands as he brought them fast together above his head, swaying like a drunk.

  “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us–”

  Rin hacked up a load of blood onto the ground. The figure continued to trip away, dimness reclaiming him once more.

  “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…”

  Suddenly, the stranger spun around sharply, coming to a still and silent stop.

  “....and into my arms.”

  For a moment Rin said nothing, as he looked right at her.

  He moved. He took a step towards her, and extended a hand, the same hand that minutes before had snapped Sanoyama’s neck. It was a pale white, marred only by a small red smear on the ring finger. Built in a small and delicate way, bones outlined in their jutting pattern with no sight of wrinkles or scarring, it looked like the hand of a child.

  “Here. Stand. Are you hurt?”

  She could see his face now that he’d stepped a little closer.

  It could have been described as ‘beautiful’.

  His hair fell down in flowing white locks past his knees, downturned doe eyes large and blue crowned by long white lashes, the lids sitting comfortably half-closed. His lips were small, pink, curved into a gentle and understanding smile, set upon a face so smooth and youthful it looked like the visage of a porcelain doll–not a wrinkle or blemish to be seen, nor any scar or touch of dust. His jaw was soft, coming to a point at a delicate chin, and from that chin a slender neck with only the slightest hint of an Adam’s apple.

  Down, lower, to his form–the only indication of his masculinity were the two smooth planes of his pectorals, for the rest of the boy was willowy and slim, the white fabric of his robes gathering around a pinched waist and then flowing out over hips that curved, right down to the lithe pillars of his legs. Barefoot, his delicate blue-veined feet seemed out of place amidst the grime and shattered glass that was strewn around them.

  Each proportion of the boy’s features sat in such a way like a sculpture, handcrafted by his mother’s womb to exist perfectly symmetrical within a precise and flawless golden ratio. To that end, ‘beautiful’ was too small and fragile a word to capably embody the vision he presented. If she were capable of feeling lust she would have swooned; as it were, she could only freeze in place.

  Though despite this–to Rin, all she felt was a cold shiver down her spine at the inhuman brightness of his glassy gaze, the lifeless tone of his quartz skin. He was far too beautiful to be a real human. She almost found herself checking his slender unblemished neck for a serial number, or a ball-jointed seam.

  “I am Yugi,” he said.

  “I already know your name. It was God who told me to look for you.”

  Faced with a statement like that, so completely detached from reality and deranged to the point where, on the ground, Rin could only look up upon that marble face and search for a hint of a joke or a sarcastic sneer, she did not respond.

  In the silence, Yugi simply stared back.

  He almost seemed to be expecting something of her.

  The wind bit into her various weeping wounds, and it felt like she was being whipped with a salted cord. Slowly, agonisingly, she began to raise herself up, leaning on one elbow to gingerly shift her knee until it was planted just firm enough beneath her body.

  Yugi clutched ahold of Rin’s shoulder, and she drew a gust of air sharply into her lungs. He was cold, shockingly (almost painfully) so. He seemed to realise that, and released her a moment later, but the icy feeling lingered against her skin.

  “Just- who the hell are you?” she croaked.

  “.....”

  Yugi’s eyelids sagged down a millimetre, and those beautiful white lashes obscured both irises from view.

  “For now, that holds no importance. What I wish to know is if you trust me.”

  Despite her exhaustion, Rin almost laughed out loud at how absurd that statement was.

  Trust?

  Trust?

  Just the concept alone, the very word in her thoughts–impossible. Incomprehensible.

  The sound of it emerging from his mouth was even more deranged, and it showed on her face. She twisted her expression into something distasteful, and the mockery clawed her chest until it burst out into a rattling approximation of a laugh, clipped and rough.

  Yugi only blinked at her, but it seemed to be a blink of mild confusion.

  “You? Ah-ha-ha.” Rin dissolved into a fit of coughing, but the next moment she continued to spit her words at him. “I don’t trust you, boy. I don’t trust a damn thing. You look like trouble to me. What is it–what do you want from me? You saved me, ah-ha, so now what? Where’s your catch?”

  Yugi tilted his head a little to the side, silken strands of hair falling past his face and catching a little on his perfect lips. He parted them slowly in thought.

  Then he, too, let out a soft laugh.

  It was a far cry from Rin’s abrasive noises. Lilting, delicate, and pretty, it was only one note, and yet it rang clearly out through the empty street like a chime.

  “I do not have anything in mind like a ‘catch’,” he said. “I don’t intend to take advantage of you, or to harm you, if you would believe me. I only sought an answer from you.”

  An answer?

  Acidic, cold wariness began to settle in Rin’s guts, turning them over and over in a sickly cycle. Something was deeply wrong with Yugi. She couldn’t identify it, had no basis for it, but her instincts screamed out red-blaring warnings every moment that she kneeled in front of the boy who smelled of old, rusty metal.

  Yugi’s face remained completely still in that calm, half-lidded smile. He didn’t seem to know how to make any other faces. He slowly reached forward, and a singular long pale finger extended towards Rin– but reflexively, she grabbed his wrist, her hand twisting and gripping in preparation to split his muscles apart.

  She was met with complete and total resistance.

  “...!”

  Her eyes widened. His seemingly delicate form now felt like solid wood. Rin, so intimately acquainted with the human body, had never felt anything like this before. She tensed a little further, only to feel him flex and push her back with ease.

  “What do you want from me, then?” she hissed, releasing him from her grip like a hot coal.

  “I am here because I require your assistance,” Yugi hummed patiently.

  Though this time he did not try to reach for her, he allowed his hand to hang loose, poised lightly in a delicate beckoning motion.

  “Come–walk with me, and so talk with me.”

  Instead of taking it, Rin recoiled. Blood dripped steadily onto the ground from a deep, wide cut across her hand, that soaked right through the bandages she wore across them. Hissing softly under her breath she finally got to her feet, rising up and uncurling seven feet and nine inches of lean muscle before him. Yugi simply craned his neck, unfazed.

  Assistance, he’d said.

  “...you’re a client?”

  That was something she was familiar with. She could handle that.

  Yugi hummed in agreement. “Something like that, yes.”

  He turned his head away from her, to gaze down the street. There was little to look at beyond old posters that fluttered in the wind, a chainlink fence blocking off an empty backstreet, the clustered buildings with the occasional light turned on in a window at the very highest floor. It was a landscape just as grim as any other part of Namato.

  But Yugi’s eyes were filled with an inescapable grief as he observed it. Grief, and a mixture of many other things–sorrow, understanding, righteous anger and a kind of love that did not seem gentle; rather grasping, desperate, and hungry.

  “Do you love this city?” he asked her, still occupied with the view ahead of him.

  His voice was so solemn that Rin couldn’t help but humour him.

  “No,” she said.

  No was the only appropriate answer for a ketsujin.

  It did not matter how long her people had lived in Namato. It did not matter how long they had been in Japan. It did not matter how many of them flooded the factories, the mines, the oil rigs and the assembly lines and the farms and every other hard labour job, putting their supernatural strength and resilience to use–no, it did not matter that their energy was spent on upholding Namato’s very foundations.

  Rin was exposed to the hate every day of her life. From the suspicious glances in the street, to the whispers, to the headlines lauding every human’s murder as the malicious actions of a ketsujin. The whispers of how they were humanity’s natural predators, how they’d be bound to drain you dry of blood should you allow them to own houses, to own money, to room with you for a temporary amount of time, to touch your hand (even slightly) as you handed them their change over the till.

  She recalled when she was once told that ketsujin were the closest thing to a dog that could speak.

  She was unloved, and in turn she loved it not.

  “I do,” Yugi said.

  “Even as rotten as it is, I love it. I love all of the people within it, and their suffering tears so terribly at my heart. I love this city like a mother loves her sinful son. Perhaps I’m a little foolish for it. But I can’t help it, either way.”

  He turned his head back to look at her, and the streetlamp cast a bright ray of light past his face. It glinted off his skin and hair–all of which had a strangely sparkling, metallic tint, as if you could turn him at the perfect angle and watch the light explode into a thousand fractal directions. The next moment it was gone.

  “Because I’m an angel.”