Free Maohden Vol. 1 by Hideyuki Kikuchi

of Setsura Aki.
    A long black slicker covered his lanky frame. He didn’t remove it even in the room. Darker than the artificial night, his pale hands and face emerged from the sleeves and collar.
    His raven eyes were open, looking at nothing, taking in the past and the future, sadness or joy, and reflected it all back in a cool light. Perhaps all creatures of Demon City looked at the world with eyes like these.
    This was one of Setsura’s many safe houses scattered throughout Shinjuku. He’d instructed his secretary to take a breather outside the ward, shuttered the senbei shop and moved here—before his visit to the Sanbo Group.
    Everything he needed was packed into the one suitcase beneath the bed. He hadn’t carried it here. It never left the place.
    Something moved in the stagnant air, as if pushing aside the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen. Setsura’s right hand.
    A white sheet of paper slipped off the edge of the bed, glided across the floor, and approached a corner of the door.
    A brief flash. The thin Japanese paper parted in two. Not torn. The one sheet became two, as if two pages stuck together had been peeled apart. They were about to hit the door and wall when—without the hint of a draft—they changed direction like willful animals and rose vertically up the surface of the walls.
    Climbed halfway up when the forefinger on his right hand moved ever so slightly. One sheet of paper became four. And kept on going, reaching the ceiling and sliding along it.
    Their movements only became disturbed when reaching the middle of the ceiling. The four sheets and the one trailing behind scattered in all four directions.
    Setsura pursed his lips. The puff struck the four sheets. They became eight. And then the same wave of wind hit the newly formed four. As if each puff of air had a mind of its own, losing shape and form, the bits and pieces fluttered down.
    Ignoring the snow of paper, the man in black sat up. He went to the door. He didn’t reach for the knob. The key quietly turned in the lock. As if nudged by the breezes he’d aroused, the door swung open of its own accord.
    The gloomy hallway revealed no sign of human life, all the doors shut tight, like he was the only occupant in the building.
    A dozen minutes later, Setsura was wending his way through the crowds on Yasukuni Avenue. Past the Tokyo Daihanten Restaurant, Hanazono Shrine, and the Pension Fund Association Building and on through Ichigaya, eventually coming to the Outer Moat Road. The streets here showed the full effects of the Devil Quake, the rows of houses still dotted with mountains of rubble.
    The buildings here just barely preserved the outlines of their previous selves. Patched up, or simply opened for business the way they were, or taken over by squatters and vagrants.
    This sense of indifference after the Devil Quake, the investigating committees had all observed, was a particular characteristic of Shinjuku.
    Although established in a social environment devoid of order, ethics and morality, this city had seen the typical human propensities toward discrimination and alienation fade in equal proportion.
    After being dispatched to Shinjuku as the British head of the seventh U.N. survey committee, Professor Bernard Sanderink publicly stated the following, making no effort to mask the mixture of wonder and confusion on his face.
Concerning our investigation of a ward in Japan’s capital city, we wish to announce our conclusions, fully aware that they contradict those of the six previous official surveys. Namely, that in districts of Shinjuku Ward, known as Demon City, the ideal implementation of human association, sought after but rarely seen since the dawn of civilization, has been achieved.
    What has surprised the survey committee in particular are the so-called “upper-class” housing estates in Kabuki-cho, Yotsuya Samoncho, and Shinjuku Nanachome. There we found residents and vagrants, or the unemployed, leading considerate and