After a few drinking sessions with colleagues, the Port Mafia members had learned, to varying degrees, that he was about to be taken off the market.
Asou Akiya began to alter his daily behaviour.
He spent money on high-end men's cologne, started wearing a wristwatch, and refined every detail of his appearance until he carried himself with unmistakable elegance. The effort paid off. Even paired with his striking looks and a sense of style decades ahead of his time, women in the organisation—tough, no-nonsense types—still threw flirtatious glances and teasing remarks his way despite knowing he was soon to have a "girlfriend."
He turned them all down without exception.
Let someone trick him into spending money and depleting the savings meant for his future wife? Not a chance.
Once again, Asou Akiya left the bookstore with an armful of French-language books and cookbooks, then slipped into the upscale department store next door. He carefully selected a luxurious six-piece French bedding set.
At the register, the young cashier glanced at the price tag and let out a wistful sigh. "Getting married, sir?"
It wasn't his first time in the store, but he hadn't expected to be remembered.
"Maybe," he answered lightly.
When the black-haired young man didn't smile, his eyes narrowed slightly into an elegant phoenix shape. The moment he did smile, however, warmth and openness flooded his face, scattering every trace of the aloofness his features otherwise suggested.
The Port Mafia's universally acknowledged pretty boy, a natural diplomat.
"By the way," he added, rubbing his chin with faint embarrassment, "do you know any jewellers in Yokohama with especially good original ring designs?"
The cashier's heart sank further.
"I'm afraid I don't. Thank you."
Asking a single girl where to buy the best engagement rings? That was just cruel.
Asou Akiya returned to the apartment less than a hundred metres from the old foreign settlement.
Before opening the door, he always checked the single strand of hair he left wedged in the frame, making sure no intruder had disturbed it.
He couldn't blame himself for being paranoid.
Lacking any real counter-surveillance skills, the best he could do was copy tricks from films and manga, minimising every possible slip until no one could ever discover he was in a relationship with someone who, officially, did not exist.
"Randou, I'm home."
He spoke to the empty apartment, carrying on a love affair with his own imagination.
After dinner, Asou Akiya settled at his desk and resumed the drawing he had left unfinished the night before. He deepened the shadows and refined the outlines of the monochrome sketch, bringing to life the young Randou who had appeared only briefly in the manga. This portrait would become ironclad proof that he had known Randō and understood him to some degree.
The technique was still raw, unmistakably manga-style.
He poured everything he had into capturing the "poet" Randou he pictured in his mind—a quiet figure cradling a book.
Finally, when it came time to colour the eyes, he picked up the wrong pen and painted them the clear blue of a Gaul.
As though it were a joke, he reached for the gold pen next.
The picture was complete.
The man staring back at him now had long golden hair and blue eyes—the very image of the real-world France's celebrated "son of the sun," "man of the wind," the forefather of surrealist poetry. He was radiant, dissolute, arrogant, slicing through the gloom of the Bungo Stray Dogs world like a blade of light.
[To the you who lives in my heart.]
…
Port Mafia headquarters.
The interpreter in charge of foreign trade at the docks arrived at Yokohama harbour. The sea wind carried a chill. A sharp-eyed colleague spotted a long strand of hair clinging to Asou Akiya's shirt.
"There's a hair on your collar, Asou-kun!"
"Ah."
Asou plucked it free, glanced at it, and gave an embarrassed little smile. The strand was long and gently wavy, silky and soft, as if a bewitching, amorous beauty had once nestled against him.
He opened his fingers and let the hair (picked up from a barber shop floor) drift away on the breeze toward the water.
His colleague teased, "So you finally scored?"
Asou's cheeks coloured faintly. He answered vaguely, "Let's just say we're seeing each other…"
Between men, conversation never lacked for women or sex. Asou had no interest in feeding the gossip and ended it with one decisive line. "I'm going ring shopping tomorrow."
Colleagues all around him turned green with envy.
Damn it.
Good-looking guys could land foreign beauties even if they were a little weak and lacked a university degree!
Asou Akiya gazed toward the distant line where sea met sky and murmured to himself, "The weather is warming up."
Spring had arrived.
He needed to stock the apartment with daily necessities.
Clothes, toiletries, and… the kind of nighttime supplies adults required when living together.
He lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the sun. A freighter's horn rolled across the water.
Asou Akiya smiled, gentle and unhurried, as though the years themselves had decided to stand still for him.
Late March.
Asou Akiya claimed pressing business and paid a foreign acquaintance from the old settlement district to commission a custom silver "long-life lock" in Yokohama's Chinatown. The front of the traditional pendant bore auspicious patterns meant to ward off evil and bless the wearer with longevity; the back was engraved with Japanese characters: Nakahara Chūya.
Japanese people rarely understood the meaning of a silver longevity lock.
Normally only overseas Chinese bought such things in Chinatown.
When the gift box arrived, Asou left it sealed in a drawer. If he managed to "pick up" Nakahara Chūya, the lock would never need to be sent. If he failed, he would find another pair of hands to deliver it to the orange-haired child still trapped inside the Sheep.
April 28th fell on a weekend this year.
The weather was perfect, clear skies without a cloud in sight. Asou had no need to request leave. He stayed home, ostensibly resting, a compact pair of binoculars in hand so he could occasionally sweep the Yokohama waterfront. Nothing unexpected happened that day. His mood was excellent. He chewed on a sweet lollipop, noise-cancelling earbuds snug in his ears to protect his eardrums in case a certain explosion went off with its usual earth-shaking boom.
When facing ability users, one needed the mindset of an ability user.
When facing a transcendent monster, one needed the courage to gamble everything on a single throw of the dice and join the banquet of ability users and script-writers alike.
Beyond that, his only task was to raise his own refinement and make the best possible first impression on Randou when they finally met.
April 29th.
Nakahara Chuuya's birthday has arrived.
Inside a clandestine military research facility deep within the Yokohama Settlement, Paul Verlaine turned on his partner and his country in a single, treacherous heartbeat, lunging for the prize that had drawn them both across the world in secret: the object they had come to Japan to steal.
"Verlaine!!!"
Arthur Rimbaud could not believe it. Shock flared bright and terrible in his gray-green eyes.
The instant the two men turned on each other, their cover shattered. Alarms shrieked through the corridors like wounded beasts. Rimbaud's body moved faster than thought; instead of retreating, he surged forward, desperate to seize the high-energy unknown life-form concealed within the facility before it could be lost forever. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, he invoked his ability, Illuminations, and tore open a golden subspace.
For his country.
He could not allow power this immense to slip into foreign hands.
There was no time left to waste. Rimbaud deleted the previous stored charge of his ability, clashed violently with Verlaine, and forcibly reached out to overwrite the mindless life-form, trying to bind it to himself as a portable weapon.
Something went horribly wrong.
No, the energy was simply too vast. The transfer failed halfway.
Panic screamed through Rimbaud's mind.
The seal shattered.
A beast wreathed in black flames erupted into the world.
In the instant the indiscriminate wave of raw power struck, Rimbaud thought he saw reluctance and farewell flicker in Verlaine's eyes. The man who looked like a god from Nordic legend possessed both flawless romantic beauty and the merciless cruelty to match. Then the black fire swallowed everything.
It was flame, it was nightmare, it was typhoon and earthquake and every natural disaster rolled into one unstoppable cataclysm.
The beast raged, releasing its strength without restraint.
Rimbaud and every soul inside the facility were hurled backward like leaves in a hurricane. The golden subspace that had shielded him cracked and splintered under the onslaught. Deep fissures tore open the earth in every direction, yet the small patch of ground directly beneath his feet somehow remained untouched. He braced against the howling wind, eyes forced almost shut, clinging to the desperate hope of one final glimpse before death claimed him.
Roar—
At first the sound was low and muffled, as though rising from the crushing depths of the sea.
Then it climbed beyond the range of human hearing, a shrill, piercing whine that shredded sanity itself, until the monstrous black beast unleashed a bellow that made every heart in its reach hammer itself against the ribs in terror.
BOOM——BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!!
The distant horizon of Yokohama's sea lay calm and clear, its azure waters cradling both light and darkness in an embrace that felt inexplicably serene.
…How gentle, Rimbaud thought, already resigned to dying alongside the traitor.
His gray-green pupils lost focus; consciousness slipped from his grasp like sand through broken fingers.
The golden subspace reached its absolute limit.
Then it shattered.
Illuminations tore apart into a thousand fragments. A hurricane of wind and flame roared in to fill the void. The shockwave caught Rimbaud again and flung him through the air like a discarded doll. He never stayed awake long enough to witness the terrifying beast suddenly rein in its fury, ceasing its widespread destruction. He did not see it collapse inward, shrinking until it became a naked seven-year-old child lying unconscious amid a pile of rubble.
Arthur Rimbaud lay buried beneath tons of shattered stone, blood pouring from a split scalp, face pressed to the dirt. The warm earmuffs that had shielded him from the cold were gone; his long black hair was matted with dust and gore, strands glued together by thick, filthy clots of blood.
By some miracle, he still breathed.
The explosion carved a wound across the city so vast and violent that all of Yokohama trembled in its aftermath.
The instant the deafening roar rolled through the streets, employees of the Special Division for Unusual Powers felt the ground quake beneath their feet. They abandoned whatever they were doing and stared in horror at the monitors flashing urgent crimson.
"Something catastrophic just happened!"
Satellite imagery confirmed an anomaly of incalculable magnitude erupting in the Yokohama Settlement.
In one quiet corner of the city, a calico cat being fed scraps by a kind stranger suddenly bristled, every hair standing on end, tail rigid with primal terror.
It turned its gaze toward the Settlement.
For a fleeting moment, something almost human—something heavy with sorrow and foreboding—flickered in those golden eyes.
[Has the military research facility in the Settlement finally blown?]
Panic rippled through the crowds. Many believed a missile strike had hit the city. The girl who had been feeding the cat blanched and reached to scoop the animal into her arms for safety, but the calico twisted free.
It leapt onto the tiled rooftop, fixed its stare on the pillar of smoke rising in the distance, and ran—straight toward the disaster everyone else was fleeing.
Asou Akiya moved against the tide of screaming, fleeing people, forcing his way toward the Settlement while shouting at the top of his lungs, "Randou! Randou, where are you?!"
His home was the closest private residence to ground zero; every window had shattered inward, and the concussive boom had nearly knocked him unconscious the moment it struck.
Asou Akiya arrived first, his years of relentless climbing practice paying off in a heartbeat. He slid down the sheer walls of the crater on gloved hands and braced feet, dropping straight into the heart of the blast zone.
Amid the smoking rubble at the bottom of the funnel-shaped hell that Arahabaki had carved into the earth, he found Arthur Rimbaud lying as though dead, and his own heart stuttered violently in his chest. "He's hurt this badly!"
Where a god had been born, only scorched earth remained.
Only the foreknowledge that no further catastrophe would come allowed Asou Akiya to conquer the primal terror clawing at his throat. He knew the destruction was over. Arahabaki had already become human—and he had to move fast if he wanted to claim his prize.
He pressed two gloved fingers to the side of Rimbaud's blood-slick neck, found the faint, stubborn pulse, and worked with frantic efficiency: pressure bandages, torn strips of cloth, anything to slow the bleeding. Then he stripped off his own long overcoat—warm, heavy, reaching past the knees—and draped it over the unconscious man's torn and naked body. He snatched up the black felt hat lying nearby, slung the wounded Rimbaud across his shoulders without another second's hesitation, and ran.
As he scrambled past a second small figure lying unconscious among the debris—an orange-haired child waiting to be found—something inside Asou Akiya's chest twisted and softened.
Chuuya.
The honest, kind-hearted boy who would one day be cruelly dragged into the Port Mafia.
The anime had never shown what Nakahara Chuuya looked like at seven, but the round baby-fat cheeks, the sweetly foolish sleeping face, and that unmistakable shock of vivid orange hair left no room for doubt. This was the future Hat Rack, rare and priceless.
For a single heartbeat Asou Akiya wavered. Then, still wearing his gloves, he drew a small velvet box from his pocket, opened it with trembling care, and fastened the longevity lock he had prepared—originally meant for Chuuya—around the boy's neck. He bent and pressed a soft, apologetic kiss to the child's forehead.
"I'm sorry. I have to save your mother first."
The words were not wrong. Without Rimbaud there would be no Chuuya; it had been Rimbaud who delivered the calamity-god into human form.
Rimbaud's condition was critical—he needed a hospital now, no delays possible. Asou Akiya had no choice but to let the boy he already thought of as a son sleep a little longer, trusting the Sheep would find him soon and take him in.
"Chuuya… see you in the future."
From that moment on, Arthur Rimbaud's life veered sharply onto an entirely different path.
In the Port Mafia's medical wing, the surgeon on duty caught sight of the long-haired man Asou Akiya carried in and nearly dropped his clipboard. He dragged Asou into the nearest corner and hissed, "Asou-kun, you're not messing with me, are you? Don't tell me this foreign guy is the lover you've been talking about?"
Asou Akiya didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. "He's my wife!"
He lifted his own left hand and let Rimbaud's limp one dangle beside it. On both ring fingers gleamed matching couple rings. Since he had no way of knowing the exact size in advance, he had spent a small fortune buying several different pairs through back channels—there was always one that would fit.
He bowed his head, voice trembling with urgency. "Please, start the surgery right now. As Port Mafia family!"
For the sake of years of bribes and favors, the surgeon threw up his hands and agreed. Only in a Port Mafia hospital could a patient be wheeled straight into the operating theater without a single piece of identification.
Asou Akiya waited outside the doors, hands clasped so tightly his knuckles went white, praying silently that the operation would go smoothly. On the ring finger of his left hand, a slender band set with a tiny diamond caught the cold fluorescent lights and scattered them like captured starlight.
Everything had arrived exactly as promised.
Anxious, yet unbearably sweet.
Verlaine, your wife is about to become mine.
—
Author's note:
Thank you, Verlaine!
Because you betrayed Rimbaud, Akiya now has a wife!
The full story is planned to exceed 200,000 words. {Note: The full story exceeds 2,000,000 words…}