The air in the apartment didn't just smell like death; it smelled like death that had been forgotten, left to ferment in the humid, suffocating rot of a Tokyo summer.
Kobayashi Masaru wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of a hand that hadn't seen soap in forty-eight hours. He stood in the entryway of the Shinjuku tenement, his boots sticking to the linoleum with a sickening schlopp every time he moved.
The wallpaper was peeling in long, jaundiced strips, revealing black mold that seemed to pulse in time with his own frantic heartbeat.
"Fuck," Masaru whispered, the word tasting like the metallic tang of his third energy drink of the morning.
He was twenty-one, broke as a joke, and currently hunting something that had likely turned the previous tenant into a decorative floor mural.
He wasn't some high-spec sorcerer from a prestigious lineage.
He was a gutter-dweller with a cheap suit and a demonic energy pool roughly the size of a puddle in a drought.
But he had a Beretta 92FS modified with sigil-etched steel and enough caffeine in his system to see through time.
He moved deeper into the unit. The living room was a graveyard of discarded convenience store bento boxes and stained futons.
He scanned the corners, his eyes darting frantically. He was high-strung, a wire pulled too tight, waiting for the snap.
Then, he heard it.
Slurp. Rip. Crunch.
It came from the kitchen—a wet, rhythmic sound that made the hair on his arms stand up like needles.
Masaru eased toward the doorframe, his grip tightening on the pistol. The air grew colder, thick with the oily residue of demonic miasma. He rounded the corner, and his stomach did a slow, sickening roll.
The demon was a hunched, hairless thing, its skin the color of a bruised plum. It had too many joints in its limbs and a jaw that unhinged like a snake's.
It was hunched over the remains of a girl—maybe twenty, roughly his age. She'd probably come to Tokyo with dreams of being an idol or a coder. Now, she was just a collection of purple-grey intestines being slurped up like cheap udon by a nightmare.
The creature froze. It turned its head a full hundred and eighty degrees, its milky white eyes settling on Masaru. A string of gore hung from its chin.
"Personal space, you ugly fuck," Masaru hissed.
The demon lunged. It was a blur of corded muscle and hunger.
Masaru didn't panic. Panic was for people who could afford it. He raised the Beretta, his meager demonic energy flowing into the barrel, lighting up the etched runes in a dim, sickly blue.
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
Five shots. The reinforced rounds tore through the creature's skull and chest at point-blank range. Each impact sounded like a wet sledgehammer hitting a melon. The demon's momentum carried it forward, slamming into Masaru and pinning him against the moldy wall before it finally went limp.
Black, viscous blood sprayed across Masaru's face, hot and stinging. It got in his mouth. It tasted like copper and burning rubber.
He shoved the twitching carcass off him, spat a glob of demon ichor onto the floor, and wiped his face with his sleeve, only succeeding in smearing the mess further. He didn't look at the girl on the floor. He couldn't.
"Job's done," he muttered to the empty room.
Renjiro Kaen was waiting downstairs, leaning against a black sedan that cost more than Masaru's entire lineage was worth. Renjiro was a middleman, a corporate parasite who made his living off the desperation of low-rank hunters.
Masaru dragged the demon's corpse out of the building by its hind leg and dumped it onto the pavement at Renjiro's feet. The body made a dull thud.
"It's dead," Masaru said, breathing hard. "The girl didn't make it."
Renjiro looked down at the mangled heap of meat, then back at Masaru's blood-streaked face. He sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a slim wallet. He flicked a single note at Masaru.
Five thousand yen.
Masaru caught it out of the air, his eyes narrowing. "The fuck is this? The contract was for ten."
Renjiro shrugged, looking bored. "Look at it, Kobayashi. It's small. Almost pitiable. My client wanted a 'menace' eradicated. This looks like a stray dog with a skin condition. Be glad I'm paying you at all."
Masaru took a step forward, the smell of gunpowder and rot rolling off him in waves. His hand hovered near his holster. Renjiro's driver shifted in the front seat, his hand moving toward his own weapon.
"Go get your ass fucked, Renjiro," Masaru spat. "Deeply. Without lubricant."
He turned and walked away before he did something that would get him executed by a corporate hit squad. Five thousand yen.
Not even enough for a decent bottle of scotch to forget the girl's face.
Back in his apartment—a six-mat shithole where the neighbors spent all night screaming and the landlord spent all day threatening eviction—Masaru lay on his back on a threadbare futon.
His ceiling had a water stain that looked vaguely like the map of a country that didn't exist. His stomach growled, a hollow, echoing sound.
Pizza, he thought. The kind with the stuffed crust. Or maybe fatty tuna. Sushi so fresh it still remembers the ocean.
He closed his eyes. He had four hundred yen in his pocket after buying more energy drinks. He'd be eating cup ramen. Again.
The next morning, the Hunter's Liaison Office was packed with the usual assortment of the doomed and the dangerous. Masaru stood in the corner, his suit jacket stiff with dried blood.
"You stink, Kobayashi," a voice called out.
It was Renjiro, standing by the coffee machine. He looked immaculate in a grey silk suit.
"I haven't showered in three weeks," Masaru replied, not even looking at him. "The water got cut off. Something about me not paying the bill. Weird, right?"
Renjiro wrinkled his nose in genuine disgust. "I won't be hiring you anymore. You've lost your edge. You're just a scavenger now."
Masaru shrugged, a slow, jerky movement. "Good. Your breath smells like your boyfriend's dick anyway. See ya around."
He walked away, ignoring Renjiro's sputtered insults. He needed a win. He needed a job that didn't involve crawling through sewage for the price of a haircut.
He scanned the private contractor stalls. Most were manned by greasy men looking for disposable fodder. But at the very end of the row, sitting behind a mahogany desk that looked wildly out of place, was a woman.
She was stunning. Mid-twenties, with hair the color of crushed violets and eyes that seemed to see right through the grime on Masaru's skin. She was tall—nearly his height—and dressed in a sharp, tailored white suit.
Masaru slumped into the chair opposite her. "I don't do windows, and I don't kill kids. Everything else is on the table if the price is right."
Most recruiters would have laughed or called security. This woman just leaned forward, a faint, almost kind smile playing on her lips.
"I'm Sakura Watanabe," she said. Her voice was like silk over gravel. "And I don't care about your hygiene, Mr. Kobayashi. I care about results."
"I'm a low-spec," Masaru said, being honest for once. "Low energy. I just shoot things until they stop moving."
"Bravery is all that's truly needed in my line of work," Sakura replied. She slid a document across the desk. "I need someone reliable. A permanent fixture. I'm offering a retainer of six hundred thousand yen per month."
Masaru froze. He felt like he'd been hit in the head with a brick. "Six hundred... what?"
"Six hundred thousand," she repeated. "In exchange, you will handle one job for me every day of the week. You get weekends off. I provide the leads, you provide the 'willpower' I've heard you possess in such abundance."
Six hundred thousand yen. He could buy a bed. He could buy a shower. He could buy a goddamn pizza restaurant.
Masaru didn't read the fine print. He didn't check the clauses about liability, mortality rates, or the nature of the 'jobs.' He grabbed the pen from the desk and scrawled his name at the bottom in jagged, desperate strokes.
"Sold," he said, his heart hammering against his ribs.
Sakura took the contract back, her smile widening just a fraction. "Welcome to the team, Masaru. Try to get some sleep. You start at dawn."
As he walked away, Masaru didn't notice the way the light caught the violet in her eyes, making them look a little less human and a lot more hungry. All he could think about was the stuffed crust.