Bungo Stray Dogs Vol. 8: Storm Bringer Read online

  “What’s wrong, Chuuya? Aren’t you happy?” asked the tall man behind him. “We did all this for you, y’know.”

  “Who celebrates one-year anniversaries? Ridiculous,” Chuuya scoffed. “I’m not not happy. I’m indifferent.”

  “C’mon, don’t be like that. You’re gonna like it. I guarantee it,” the tall man assured Chuuya as he followed him. “We’ll even be presenting you with a little anniversary gift or two later. Isn’t that exciting? Feels just like being in school again, right?”

  Chuuya suddenly stopped, looked back, and glared at the man. “So you’re the one behind all this, Piano Man? You have the lamest sense of humor.”

  “What can I say? I live for moments like this. Annoying people with my lame sense of humor is what gets me out of bed every morning.”

  The mafioso, wearing a formal black coat and white slacks, beamed at Chuuya’s bitter remark.

  Known within the Port Mafia as Piano Man, he dressed in black and white without exception. He was tall with slender fingers and always wore an amused smile. Piano Man was the Young Bloods’ founder and essentially served as its leader; plus, he’d originally invited Chuuya to join the group.

  Piano Man was more of a craftsman than a mafioso, and he was most likely the only person in Yokohama who could create counterfeit money—known as supernotes—indistinguishable from the real thing. However, he could also be quite fickle, missing deadlines by months if the counterfeit notes didn’t meet his standards, even if doing so went against the boss’s orders.

  Incidentally, he wasn’t nicknamed Piano Man because of his black-and-white attire. His weapon of choice was an automatic winding machine fitted with carbon steel piano wire. Once the wire was around his enemy’s neck, they were decapitated within seconds. No amount of brute strength could save them. All that would be left was a perfectly flat surface between their shoulders, copious amounts of blood, and the echoes of the victim’s final scream. This was a man of whimsy, delicacy, and cruelty, said to be the youngest mafioso closest to becoming a Port Mafia executive.

  Just when Chuuya started walking into the back of the pool hall once more, another man called out to him.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Chuuya, you shoulda seen your face! I was all for this little act, too, just in case you were curious! The star of the Young Bloods and former Mafia enemy: Chuuya Nakahara, the Sheep King! Just seeing that pissed-off look on your face made joining this group worth it!” said a blond young man with a vibrant laugh as he twirled his shotgun.

  Chuuya glared at him. “Hmph. You’re lucky I realized it was all an act, Albatross. ’Cause if I didn’t, you’d have been the first one to die.”

  “Whoa there. Sorry, but you wouldn’t be able to kill me. I’d slice off your hand with this here blade before you’d even manage to land a hit.”

  Then the blond youth soundlessly pulled a kukri machete out of his coat. He cut through the air a few times with weightless speed before simply letting it go. The blade immediately pierced the floor with a heavy thud, leaving radial cracks where it landed.

  The blond youth laughed. He often laughed with a cheerful look on his face, which was where he got the nickname Albatross. A talkative individual, Albatross was prone to getting carried away. Even in the middle of battle with blood and guts flying through the air, his subordinates never lost sight of him because all they ever had to do was follow his voice and laughter.

  Albatross was said to have complete control over “anything that’s faster than walking.” Put simply, vehicles were his game. Whether it was trucks for transporting goods or a cargo ship that could slip past the coast guard’s radar, he was your man. He could even have a getaway car with a fake license plate ready if the situation called for it. Albatross was originally the Mafia’s wheelman, capable of piloting anything with a steering wheel more quickly and with greater precision than anyone else. There were even rumors that he once got away from the coast guard’s high-speed attack helicopter in an old, beat-up fishing boat, and not a single person in the Mafia doubted those rumors. Anyone who made him mad wouldn’t survive three days in the Port Mafia because he controlled the vehicles—in other words, he controlled the cash flow. If he hated someone, he could shut down their business and leave them with nothing in the blink of an eye.

  “Hey, Chuuya, let’s make a toast!”

  Albatross caught up with Chuuya and held out a champagne glass, but Chuuya only gave him a brief glance before continuing to walk away.

  “Yikes, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today,” said Albatross. He held the champagne glass up in an exaggerated motion as if to prevent it from spilling. “We’re used to you randomly being in a bad mood once every month or so, but I gotta ask: Did something happen? A bad dream, maybe?”

  A bad dream.

  The instant he heard those words, Chuuya turned around, furious.

  “Nothing happened!”

  His rage violently shook the glasses in the pool hall.

  “Sheesh, don’t scare me like that… So? What’s going on?”

  After a brief moment of hesitation, Chuuya’s eyes wandered around the room until he lowered his voice slightly and said, “Day after day, you’ve been goin’ on night-long benders right above me, Albatross. That’s what’s going on. How many times do I have to tell you that your floor is my ceiling?”

  “Aw, c’mon, I haven’t forgotten. I make sure to be extra noisy because I know you’re down there, neighbor.” Albatross smiled innocently.

  He lived in the same high-end apartment building as Chuuya but on the next floor up. As far as Chuuya was concerned, putting Albatross on the floor above him was one of the biggest mistakes the Port Mafia had ever made. Albatross would sometimes invite himself into Chuuya’s apartment on a whim and drag him along somewhere, saying he needed help with a job. Then they would take a car, boat, or even a helicopter to some ridiculously faraway war zone. Chuuya became a really good swimmer thanks to this, since Albatross wouldn’t always have a vehicle ready to take them back home.

  Chuuya ignored Albatross and continued toward the back of the pool hall. He was about to hang up his coat when a man with a champagne glass suddenly appeared by his side.

  “Heh-heh… Happy one-year anniversary, Chuuya…,” the man said, chuckling. His bangs, cut in a perfectly straight line, concealed his dark gaze upon Chuuya. “I never expected you to last this long… Heh-heh.”

  He was unusually skinny. His thin wrists seemed to hover between the cuffs of his collared shirt; the hand not holding a champagne glass was clutching onto a drip stand with an IV bag whose tube disappeared into his clothing. He looked extremely unwell, to put it lightly.

  “Doc.”

  Chuuya accepted the champagne glass handed to him, then peered inside it.

  “You didn’t poison this, did you?”

  “Not at all.” The man called Doc smirked grimly. “Poison wouldn’t be enough to kill you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “From experience.” His eyes glowed eerily. “I’ve killed many with poison.”

  Doc, the personification of unhealthy, was the Mafia’s medical supervisor. There were a lot of unlicensed quacks in the criminal underworld, but Doc was different. He was an actual doctor who got his MD in North America.

  So-called back-alley doctors were highly sought after in underground society, since legitimate hospitals reported anyone who came in with wounds from torture or gunshots to the authorities. That was where these underground doctors came in, and the Port Mafia was no different.

  But the similarities with other criminal organizations ended there. Doctors were highly valued in the Port Mafia and given preferential treatment. Ougai Mori, the Mafia boss, was a former back-alley doctor himself, after all. Furthermore, Doc was a top-class physician even among his extraordinary peers in the organization’s medical division. He had already saved around eight hundred lives, despite his youth. And he had purposely robbed about that many lives, too.

  Do
c’s goal was to bring himself one step closer to God. He personally believed that every life saved brought him that much closer to his goal. He aimed to save around two million people—the same number of people that God killed in the Bible. That was why he joined the Mafia, where he calmly waited for a massive war that would see countless people die like insects.

  “What a lineup. Honestly wasn’t expecting to see you here, too, Doc,” Chuuya admitted as he looked around the hall. “Why the hell was everyone invited here just for a one-year anniversary, though?”

  “Allow me to explain.”

  A young man with a kind voice slowly approached him.

  “It’s because the first year in the Mafia is the hardest.”

  “What?”

  The man smiled. It was a very sweet, attractive smile, perhaps thanks to his unusually handsome face. His captivating beauty was unparalleled. If he dressed in men’s clothing and smiled, women would be swept off their feet; the same would happen to men if he dressed in women’s clothes.

  “That first year after joining the Mafia is the harshest period. It’s a dead man’s curve, so to speak. Within the first year, most people either run away, get killed on the job, or get snuffed out by the organization for causing problems. That’s why today is a day to celebrate your survival.”

  “Heh. What? Didn’t think I was gonna make it, Lippmann?” asked Chuuya as he glared at him.

  “Oh, no. I knew you could do it,” replied the man called Lippmann as he flashed Chuuya a captivating grin.

  Lippmann’s job was extremely peculiar, even compared to the others here. He was the Mafia’s negotiator with the outside world. In other words, he met with people in the “real” world. He negotiated with front companies, met and talked with political figures, and even dealt with the press if push came to shove. If the Port Mafia had a stage face, it would be him.

  Killing Lippmann would be an extremely difficult task. In a way, he’d be even harder to kill than the boss himself…because Lippmann was a movie star. He had countless passionate fans abroad. If he was murdered or went missing, all the top news agencies worldwide would rush to cover it. A news story that massive would immediately have people everywhere searching for his killer, and that was something a criminal enterprise wanted to avoid at all costs.

  Furthermore, Lippmann himself was an extremely powerful skill user with an ability that reacted to and countered an attacker’s thirst for blood. Therefore, it would be impossible to kill him without leaving behind any evidence.

  If his killer’s name got out, every major news organization the world over would be chomping at the bit to expose the person’s history, motive, and who was backing them. Whatever organization ordered the hit would lose any privacy it once had, and that would spell its end. Murdering Lippmann was a death trap—a bomb that would go off the moment he died—hence why nobody had the guts to lay a hand on him.

  His fame wasn’t his only weapon, either. He was a born actor with the gift of gab and impeccable negotiating skills, plus a beautifully chiseled face. Lippmann was especially good when it came to negotiations with people in the “real” world and solved most of them the moment he sat down at the table.

  “In fact, I wouldn’t mind at all even if you were kicked out of the organization,” Lippmann added, his smile as gentle as a feather. “Because if that happened, I would welcome you to join me with my work. Together we could take on the world as actors on the silver screen.”

  “I honestly can’t think of anything I’d want to do less.” Chuuya frowned bitterly, as if he’d swallowed poison. “In fact, that might be the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life.”

  “I was against throwing you a one-year anniversary party,” came a sudden, quiet voice from the back.

  It wasn’t a yell; there was nothing intimidating about it, either. And yet everyone fell silent and looked in the direction of the voice. Standing there was a man wearing very plain clothing.

  “Iceman.” Chuuya spoke cautiously. “Yeah, not much for celebrations, are ya?”

  The man never showed any emotion, no matter what. His presence seemed alien compared to the fiercer, flashier Young Bloods members. He didn’t come off as ambitious, nor did he leave much of an impression. If anything, he simply blended in with his environs like the quiet darkness of the night.

  That was Iceman. The most senior member of the group after Piano Man, he was a quiet, expressionless individual who liked simple clothing. Even his work was extremely simple, especially in the Mafia. He was a hit man.

  He didn’t use a skill to kill his target. He wouldn’t even use a gun. Iceman typically carried a knife on his person, but not even that was for work purposes. He always used something in the immediate vicinity: a pen, a bottle of booze, a lamp cord. The moment anything found its way into his hands, it became a deadly weapon, far more dangerous than a bullet. Hence why he could kill a person no matter where he was—whether it be a desert, a palace, or even a bank vault.

  And Iceman had another extraordinary gift as well. He could feel it in his bones whenever someone used a skill near him. This wasn’t thanks to any special ability or technology. It was simply how his body worked. That was why he instinctively knew at a moment’s notice the best time and place to kill someone, and that made his kill ratio far higher than the average combat-type skill user. And it led the Mafia to put so much trust in him, too. Without a skill, neither the Special Division for Unusual Powers nor the military police’s Skilled Crime Task Force ever had him on their radar. No one got in his way. He was like a shadow. People in the Mafia believed that if anyone was to kill Chuuya, Iceman would be most likely to succeed.

  “Wasn’t expecting you to come to a party for me, Iceman. I thought you hated me.” Chuuya flashed a provocative smile. “We went toe to toe once when I was still with the Sheep. Doesn’t help that you failed to assassinate me; bet that really hurt your rep.”

  “I was against having a party, but not because I don’t like you. I don’t have any grudges, either. I just didn’t want to anger you for no good reason.” Iceman’s tone was flat and consistently unemotional. “We all knew you’d make it past your first year.”

  “What?”

  “We thought you were going to start a rebellion,” Iceman continued, his voice sharp enough to split a glacier in two. “You used to be the leader of the Sheep—an opposing organization. We thought you were going to betray the boss, kill him, and start a war with the Mafia. So Piano Man invited you to join the Young Bloods to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  Chuuya glanced at Piano Man, who was watching the exchange with a blank expression. He neither confirmed nor denied the allegation—which meant it was true.

  “…Hmph. He did, eh?” Chuuya glared at the others. “No wonder everyone was being all nice to me, makin’ sure I was okay, like I’m a newborn or something. I’m touched. You guys gave me toys, pacifiers, and rattles to keep me from getting upset. Well, I’m a big boy now thanks to you all. A big one-year-old boy. Now I see why you threw me such a big party.”

  He crushed the champagne glass in his hand, sending the liquid through the air. Iceman still didn’t even blink.

  “We had our reasons for being cautious,” Iceman said. “July 18. It was 3:18 PM. One of the gemstone wholesalers angered you and suffered an injury that took three months to heal. All because he asked you a certain question. A simple, thoughtless question. But the moment you heard it, you threw him all the way to the roof of a three-story building.”

  “I did? Can’t remember.” Chuuya’s gaze was sharp, unlike his tone of voice. “How ’bout you ask me that same question, then, so we can check? If you’ve got the guts, that is.”

  Iceman remained silent. He spent the next five seconds so expressionless that he might absorb all the emotion in the room, then replied:

  “‘Where were you born?’”

  Chuuya immediately grabbed Iceman by the collar and violently pulled him close. The sound of fabric ripping followed as Ice
man’s shirt tore at the seams.

  “What are you doing?” Iceman asked, still expressionless as he looked down at Chuuya’s hands.

  “That depends on you.” Chuuya didn’t loosen his grip.

  “Hey, come on. That’s enough,” Albatross pleaded anxiously from Chuuya’s side, grabbing him by the arm. “Don’t let a li’l question like that anger you, Chuuya. That’s not you.”

  “That’s for me to decide, damn it. I’ll kill him if I have to.”

  Chuuya swiftly knocked Albatross’s hand away, causing Albatross to stumble backward. Chuuya tried to take a step forward, but he suddenly stopped. A cue stick was pressing right against his temple like the blade of a sword.

  “What’re you plannin’ to do with that stick?” Chuuya asked without a shred of emotion on his face. He remained standing completely still.

  “That depends on you,” Iceman replied, cue stick in hand.

  Chuuya leaned his upper body away from the cue stick, then slammed his head back into it. Countless bits of wood flew through the air, and most pieces ended up raining down on Iceman himself; one sharp splinter sliced his right temple. Blood trickled down into the corner of his eye, but he didn’t even blink.

  “That’s enough,” hissed the most cold-blooded voice in the room.

  Out of nowhere, Piano Man was standing right behind Chuuya with a clear piano wire extending from the sleeve of his outstretched arm. It hung around Chuuya’s neck like an expensive necklace.

  “Chuuya,” Piano Man said coldly. “‘No using skills on comrades.’ That’s the first rule of this group. Did you forget?”

  Although it was called a piano wire, what Piano Man wielded wasn’t the same kind of string used in instruments. It wasn’t nearly that simple. This was industrial-grade wire strong enough to lift and carry iron or concrete blocks.

  And deep inside Piano Man’s sleeve was a winding machine. Once it was activated, the piano wire transformed into the world’s lightest guillotine and sliced its target’s head clean off. Chuuya could manipulate gravity and make the piano wire lighter, but he wouldn’t be able to slow down the winding machine, which meant he wouldn’t be able to prevent himself from being decapitated.