Akahoshi was hypnotized.

  Body and mind, he could hardly move. His hand felt numb as it held onto the lightly smoking dog-end that had left dark soot stains across his fingers. The pain of that burn was nothing to him anymore. His retinas watered with the pain of the lights and irritation from the smoke and noise and the oppressive, endless warmth that stole all the freshness from his lungs.

  It was always the case whenever he stood too still. The thoughts rose up from the depths, stealing away all of his sense. He hadn’t blinked for so long that any random person nearby might have assumed he was on drugs.

  His dilated pupils had nothing to do with substances; they were enlarged like a frozen deer’s with fear.

  That red-haired girl he’d seen was really giving it her all, maybe mistaking his endless gaze for interest, or lust. With sinuous movements she blessed the pole, wrapping both thick thighs around it, slowly swaying back and forth. She was both the snake and the charmer, and Akahoshi felt as if he was watching somebody die; terrified but at the same time drawn in by a morbid inability to miss the show.

  As the music changed and the lights flashed and dimmed from blue to a rich, deep scarlet, she turned to look directly at him, and blew him a coy little kiss. Red. Everything was washed with it, the surroundings, his skin, her dark eyes and drawstring-thin thong, and her hair glowed now. It shone, multiplied into red a thousand times over, inexorably burning him. His fingers burned. The dog-end suddenly felt like he had stuck his fingers onto a lit grill, flooding him with a paradoxical sickly chill.

  He dropped it, and it was crushed into nothingness by someone’s shoe.

  I can’t–fuck.

  Abandoning his post, Akahoshi turned away. He pushed past the men who were swarming back to the stage, sated with alcohol and ready to toss their month’s wages at the dancers’ feet. Shakily pushing open the door, he entered the men’s bathroom and slammed it behind him, pressing his back to the cool surface.

  He exhaled deeply.

  The bathroom was completely empty, not even a couple taking advantage of the privacy. Away from the music and the crowd, Akahoshi bent over the closest sink and threw up. Then he switched on the tap, watching the bile swill away down the plughole.

  Dexter would be fine on his own for five minutes, and if he wasn’t, then Akahoshi wouldn’t be there to witness it. His reflection in the mirror was a pitiful thing; a grimy, sad-looking wet rag of a man stared back as he reached out to touch it gingerly. His hesitant hand only trembled all the more.

  Burned out as his eyes were by the lights, everything in the bathroom appeared hazed with blue. It made a soothing change from the red. He knew he should re-emerge as soon as possible, not disappear on his partner in the middle of a job, but it was hard to force himself to move at all when the looming tiredness weighed him down, pensive in his shame.

  Though they were weary, Akahoshi’s eyes were still sharp enough to notice something bright and glittering in the corner of the room.

  …?

  It was glitter, in fact. A bright trail of it was smeared at waist-height across the edge of the janitor’s closet door, pink and inviting. Slowly, pushing himself off of the sink, Akahoshi walked over with a slow tread to better investigate it.

  The glitter came off easily onto his thumb as soon as he touched it, and it had a slightly sticky feel on his skin.

  Body glitter. An image of the shimmering strippers reappeared in Akahoshi’s mind. From one of the girls. She went into the men’s bathroom?

  Immediately, his heart leapt with something like excitement. A gut feeling was brewing that said this tiny detail was something of significance–to what, he couldn’t guess yet. Akahoshi clamped both fingers around the end of the door, trying to dig it out with his nails before it slowly began to creak open.

  “...”

  He was unsurprisingly met with the inside of a supply closet.

  Undeterred, Akahoshi stepped almost completely inside, feeling around the wooden space. He could smell a suffocating haze of perfume all around him, clinging to the mop and brush and the various keys hung behind the door. It was mixed up, a collective of various flowers and other sweet scents all layered over one another.

  So more than one of the girls came in here. Why the hell would they? Akahoshi continued to spread his palms flat, searching for something that he had a growing suspicion he would find.

  Tnk. His nail tapped against something tiny and metal. Behind an innocent-looking rag, there was a small steel handle, almost flat against the board. There it was.

  He hooked his fingers into it, and pulled.

  Christ, the one time I wish I’d committed to the gym.

  After a good thirty seconds of effort, the door suddenly came away, causing a rush of cold air to snake down his baggy shirt.

  Akahoshi was looking into a larger version of the supply closet– much larger. It looked to be the size of at least a medium room, filled with nothing but shelves stacked with unlabelled cardboard boxes. It was visibly musty and unpleasant, but there was still a hint of that trailing rosy perfume that told him someone had been inside here recently.

  A secret room? Really?

  Taking a moment to look around gave Akahoshi a better visual on the area. It didn’t exactly have the look of a place well-taken care of, and was lit by only one led white light, painfully bright. There were security cameras mounted in the corner, but they were tilted down and the usual blinking red dot was inactive. It seemed like when he knocked out the internet connection downstairs, it had interfered with the cameras as well.

  And since they’re not back up yet, nobody’s noticed. At least not for now.

  He was well aware it was likely a mistake rooting around where he wasn’t asked for, but that didn’t stop the dark-haired man from stepping further inside, reaching out to surreptitiously flip open the lid of one of the boxes.

  There was quite a lot of cocaine inside it.

  Akahoshi slowly closed it again. If he felt like some after this job, he could buy at somewhere local for cheaper.

  In of itself it was no great surprise that an establishment like this had a hidden storage unit– acting as the front for many illicit businesses, it stood to reason that there would be some secret place inside to store goods that had not yet been bought or transported. Akahoshi’s curiosity stemmed from the cumulation of events: Kotaki’s hasty disappearance, the strippers’ odd passage in and out, and the large crates piled messily up in the corner that had yet more glitter smeared across them.

  They had moved something recently, and done it sloppily.

  Yugi mentioned how Kotaki was trading stuff to Zero Hand. This has gotta be it.

  His shoes made an echo across the concrete floor as he approached the out-of-place crates.

  The lid of the topmost one was heavy, and Akahoshi’s head swam pitilessly as he hoisted it up with all the strength in his body. Unfortunately, as he did so the lid made a horrible creak that shot through his body like a jolt of electricity, and immediately swung down to hit the side of the crate with a reverberating violent bang.

  The bang continued over and over, and Akahoshi realised he was listening to his heartbeat now. A tension slowly crawled over his clammy skin, mixed with an unexpected embarrassment, like he was a child caught sneaking in his mother’s side-drawer.

  “...”

  But nobody came running to investigate. Reassured, he turned back to the open crate, stepping onto the one below to properly peer inside of it.

  At first, Akahoshi didn’t have the slightest clue what he was looking at. A tangle of wires and long metal pieces filled it to the brim, like the underside of a poorly-maintained work desk. It took a minute of blankly staring to realise that it was something large, and mechanical.

  When he grabbed onto one of the pieces and slowly dragged it out, more and more of the goods were revealed. A long, spine-like segment made of flat interlocking pieces that clinked with each movement, attached to a crossbar at the top with solid iron shoulderplates welded on. Underneath, Akahoshi saw a jumble of thin black wires surrounding what looked to his uneducated eye like a circuitboard– and next to that, a full bionic hand; shiny, plastic and fully articulated. When he poked at it, the fingers sagged independently of one another.

  His heart started pounding again, but this time even faster.

  By the looks of things, the crates were filled with some kind of robot.

  Or at least, the individual components of a robot.

  Akahoshi began to take out his cellphone from the side pocket of his jeans, fumbling to open the flip-top and swiping to the camera, hovering his shaky hands above the container. Click. He angled it sideways, trying to capture the whole contents on the tiny blue-tinted screen. Click. In truth, the novelty of his discovery had worn off already, and he was already thinking back to the exposed bags of cocaine, until–

  “Ah.”

  Stirring the components with his hand, a large and distinct engraving emerged into his field of view, carved onto the side of a prosthetic leg. Gingerly he lifted it out, leaving sweaty marks on the slippery-smooth plastic, as if afraid it might come to life and kick him.

  It read: Null Improvements Co. ?1989

  Founded sometime last year. So, what gives? I’ve never heard of this company before.

  Not that Akahoshi usually spent his time looking up this year’s hot-and-trending startup projects, but something about it reeked of suspicious activity.

  Aside from, well, the mysterious robotics. And the hidden room too.

  His alcohol-rotted brain began to kick back into gear. He needed to inform Dexter of this, he knew–and then he had to leave as soon as possible. Every second spent lingering inside raised his chances of being discovered. Suddenly overcome by nerves, Akahoshi slammed the crate shut, a single dark wire hanging sadly out.

  Can’t make it obvious I’m snooping around. The cellphone beeped with each press of the keys as he typed out a long message, but then backspaced it all upon second thought.

  hey I found something really weird in this secret back room of the club

  i kinda feel like its got something to do with zero hand

  can yuo come look? sry for dissappearing but i had to piss

  Subtlety was not Akahoshi’s strong suit.

  After a poised moment of thought, he began typing again, and this time he hit the send button.

  heyy, i got some sweet pictures of something real hot.

  It only took a few moments for the ever-punctual Dexter to reply.

  We don’t have time for being perverts ( ? -?)?

  Damn, of course he assumed Akahoshi was serious. He chewed on a ragged hangnail, tearing the brittle keratin until the nailbed beneath started bleeding.

  yeah we do

  can’t send em rn though cause the wife will get angry if she checks my phone. YK how it is

  i probably gotta get back to her right about now actually

  That was bound to do it.

  It had been a long time since Akahoshi had had to worry about ‘the wife’.

  It took longer for Dexter to reply, though Akahoshi saw the little typing dots appear and disappear again. He’d caught on now, he knew.

  I see～ wait for me, okay? I’ll drive you home in five ^^

  He exhaled a sigh of relief. There it was again–that strange, gripping feeling, warming the pit of his nauseous stomach.

  He was starting to feel useful.

  Slipping his cellphone back into his pocket, Akahoshi picked his way back through the narrow shelves, trying not to leave any more obvious marks of his presence behind. There was a roll of old carpet that might have been stained with dark red strewn in his path, and he almost tripped over it.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  It would be nice and easy now. Dexter was bound to have found something–yes, he always did the best work that he could, but this time, Akahoshi had every right to put his name on it; and he’d done something unexpected, something avant-garde. Did it matter that he’d run off on his own, or that he’d gotten tipsy at work? No, not anymore. He was practically giddy with the feeling of importance. Yugi was going to look at him soon enough. His pale eyes would pass over the assembled group before locking onto him, nodding in succinct approval, and he would say- Due to Akahoshi’s lucky decisions, we were able to solve the issue of Zero Hand at the root.

  Such was the strength of his imagination that when Akahoshi approached the door, he laid a clammy hand on the handle without realising that it had slowly begun to twist downwards, pushing him back with the same force that he pulled it open.

  The door did open, but not because of him.

  He found himself staring into a sea of glittery skin. Eyes slowly sliding up, he looked upon the gaudy-painted face of the stripper who was frozen still in surprise, one hand on the handle and her other hand clutching a clipboard and pen between her fingers.

  There passed then fifteen silent seconds in which either of them could easily have gotten the upper hand over the other, but neither of the two found themselves able to move, waiting on a reaction that never came. Akahoshi slowly withdrew his hand, and the woman’s eyes glanced down to follow its path as he flexed open his weaponless fingers and positioned it flat beside his head.

  Eventually she said, “You’re not supposed to be back here.”

  “Mmh. Yeah, I guess I’m not.”

  “I’ll have to kill you now, I’m afraid.”

  “Wait, really?”

  Before he could even bring his hands down the meat of her fist connected squarely with his solar plexus.

  The force of that punch was doubled in the other direction by the solid wall of boxes that Akahoshi was sent flying into. His vision flickered and exploded into kaleidoscopic white, and while he was still rather surprised that flimsy cardboard could feel that solid when it was packed tightly together, she punched him again, and then a third time right in the centre groove of his sternum.

  Fuck me! Akahoshi’s threadbare instincts kicked in as the stripper began winding up for the finishing blow, and he managed to roll out of the way just before the hit slammed into the metal frame of the shelves behind him. It was clear now that Night Dancer didn’t just hire any pretty face that caught their eye on the street corners.

  “Christ, do ya mind?” he burst out. It would be worse for him to dash for the exit now. The moment anybody heard and came running was the moment he effectively failed. God damn, just think of the money! I could buy a night with twenty girls like her if I don’t fuck this up! He had to reflexively blink away the image of Dexter’s disappointed face mouthing “Oh, you’re not spending time with me tonight?”, before he remembered that Dexter didn’t say things like that to him anymore.

  “Come on, oh….don’t make this hard,” she panted, like a service worker convincing an old woman that her coupon was invalid.

  Quickly, he tapped the tips of his fingers together.

  Akahoshi was not all that good at street fights. He took punches like a sodden paper towel and more often than not was too sick and tired to withstand more than a few complicated moves before his dehydrated muscular system completely shut down. He knew this already. He knew this, as he stumbled backwards once again to avoid being grabbed into a neck-breaking embrace.

  That was why he never got into street fights.

  Suddenly, Akahoshi could feel everything. Everything, insofar as the outline of everything. Every movement he made felt like hitting a drum, feeling the trembling soundwaves extend outwards and then ricocheting back into the soft grey matter of his brain, frantic and uncontrollably raw. The sight of his opponent split, briefly, into a fractal approximation of herself, and then flashed with a million repeating afterimages until the entire room was filled with an imprint of every movement that she had previously made and was now currently making, in a fleeting journey right towards the front of his cranium.

  She hit him in the face. Blood exploded from his nose at the same time light exploded behind his eyes.

  It didn’t matter, because now as Akahoshi was sprawled out across the floor with his leg cramping up and his nerves shot to hell, he had already finished the fight in his mind’s eye.

  Maybe it was overconfident of him to think that. That didn’t matter either.

  Akahoshi’s ankle hit the side of the crates he’d been investigating earlier. He glanced backwards at it, just to check if the lid was still askew. Hinges creaked as he quickly fumbled to lift it up, wasted arms trembling uncontrollably.

  “Don’t touch that box!” The woman lunged to stop him, but she skidded to a halt when he dug his hand inside, dragging out a cybernetic arm with a large attachment strapped to it.

  There was a trigger attached to a clasp at the wrist joint. Akahoshi laid a shaky finger on it.

  “Put that down,” she said, “You don’t know how to use it.”

  “I don’t,” he agreed. The longer he looked at it, the more clumsily-made it seemed; just a prosthetic with what looked like a sniper rifle bolted to the side, only it was missing the grip and suppressor. He flicked the safety off with a click.

  “I could try. I’m real stupid, y’know. Maybe I’d blow my ears, pop out a shoulder firin’ this.” The arm was so heavy it was slowly dragging him down, and Akahoshi hoisted it back into place, putting up one knee to support it.

  “It’d turn your head into a hole in the ground either way.”

  She didn’t move. He was stupid enough to injure them both and she knew that.

  But Akahoshi wasn’t planning on firing the arm.

  「 Vibrokinesis- 4th Rank

  >>The ability to alter and manipulate vibrations in the air and in objects. Also capable of affecting airborne frequencies such as Wi-Fi, radio waves and electromagnetic radiation. 」

  The air in the room compressed.

  It brought to mind the feeling of being vacuum-sealed into a plastic packet or a deep-sea diving bell. The back of Akahoshi’s neck crawled, even though he was long since used to the feeling. The stripper knew something was wrong the moment it happened, looking around rapidly and spreading her wary hands, but foresight couldn’t protect her from something like this.

  Then the pressure broke.

  It split like the seal on a bottle with a dull thrum and flung her backwards into the wall. When she crumpled into it a small smear of blood was left behind. Some of the wooden crates split to reveal the bright new wood beneath and outside, in the grimy empty men’s bathroom, the mirrors shattered in unison with a clear singing noise.

  Amidst the shards clattering in piles to the ground, Akahoshi started dry-retching again.

  Disrupting the natural flow of frequencies around him put a terrible strain on his brain (he was almost positive he’d come close to a brain bleed. Maybe, once or twice, and not because of the drugs), and the subsequent spinning was enough to throw anybody’s stomach out of alignment. But nothing came up; he’d vomited enough today already.

  “Ahgh….nhh, ah…god, dammit…”

  The woman across from him was no longer moving. If she was dead he’d have to explain the reason why he had gotten involved in an active murder case to Yugi; but he sighed in relief when a press to the neck revealed that her pulse was still fluttering. Akahoshi managed to haul himself through the narrow door with her limp form in tow and kicked open one of the cubicle doors, throwing her onto the closed toilet lid and then slamming it shut. There was nothing much he could do about the mirrors.

  Akahoshi’s phone screen was cracked when he dug it out of his pocket, but the battered device still turned on, albeit slowly, and flickering every now and then. There were four unread messages from Dexter at the top of the screen.

  Sorry, that took longer than I thought. I’m outside now (∩?o?∩)?

  Bring the hot stuff that you mentioned btw.

  Hey where are you, are you still inside? "?? ????? ??"

  Are you okay?

  got fucked up coming outside now with it

  What?

  Don’t make a scene

  Dex would make a good father, he reflected as he kept a tight grip on the device and knelt down to find a large enough shard on the floor to see his face. There was blood all the way down it, splattered on his neck and lips and a few flecks stuck on his smoke-yellowed teeth. He’s nailed the curt disappointment in his texts. It didn’t occur to him that fathers like that couldn’t exactly be called ‘good’.

  It took two handfuls of icy sink water before the blood was sufficiently diluted down to a light pinkish stain. Spluttering, he quickly got to his feet and shuffled to the door, backing out of it like a reeling drunk who’d fallen asleep on the toilet, palming the wall to keep his balance, and when he emerged not a single person in the club looked his way. It was like a freshly broken time capsule; the air was still hot, the music still loud, the mass of bodies still overwhelmingly tight. No, he wasn’t much to look at at all. A messy man swaying and staggering over his own feet was the least surprising thing to see in someplace like this, even if his nose was still dribbling red down his upper lip.

  Akahoshi slipped to the exit and shut the door behind him.

  “You look positively awful.”

  “Thanks,” trailed Akahoshi’s sick-dog voice from the back seat, where he was curled up lying lengthwise with the two seatbelts clasped over his waist. He was certain this was in direct violation of one or two driving safety laws, but the vice of a migraine crushing Akahoshi’s skull flat into the seat disagreed with him sitting upright.

  Dexter started the engine and slowly reversed them out of the parking lot, before violently hitting the gas pedal and sending the car drifting out backwards into the road.

  “God, please just drive like a normal person,” Akahoshi hissed, bringing up his hands to fold them over both ears. He felt the car halt, and then lurch roughly forwards again, and then stop and start multiple times in quick succession before Dexter began speeding in the correct direction down the road.

  “Fifty-point turn,” he snarked.

  “Oh, hush.”

  Akahoshi rolled over on the seat again, this time feeling about for his cellphone in the footwell. He sniffed. “You took long enough to get here. I thought you'd driven off. Without me.”

  Dexter turned to observe him then with something bordering on amazement.

  “...You're twenty-five,” he said. “You can drive perfectly fine by yourself.”

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Oh. Really?”

  “Yeah. Had a birthday last year.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  Dexter continued to drive in silence for a moment.

  “Well,” he eventually said. “You're twenty-six. You can drive perfectly fine by yourself.”

  “They, uh. They disqualified my license.”

  "Oh dear. Why?"

  “Drunk driving.”

  "Ah….on the birthday?"

  "Mmh."

  "Oh dear."

  The atmosphere in the car was strangely calm. He could tell how Dexter was avoiding looking right at him, how he texted and talked and made expressions in the same way that he did to everybody else who wasn’t Akahoshi; and it was too polite. It was far too detached. He would’ve preferred being iced out, cursed out, shut out, simply anything honest and hostile–over being spoken to like a client.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened back there?” asked Dexter flatly.

  Oh. On second thoughts, customer treatment couldn't be that bad. His spine wilted like a dry flower.

  “Like I said. Had to piss–” Akahoshi slowly unclipped the seatbelt around his shoulders, rising to a sitting position despite the pressure on his temples.

  “I just wanted to get out.” Red. Red glowing like embers behind his eyelids.

  “Oh, I see how it is. You left your partner alone during a mission to use the restroom.” Dexter's tone of voice was withering. He spun the wheel abruptly as they took a sharp turn at the last minute, throwing Akahoshi’s face against the window, and if he hadn't known any better he would have said it was deliberate.

  “There was a room. A hidden area in the cabinet of the men's bathroom,” he said against the glass. “I went in there and it was full of stolen shit. Boxes an’ boxes of snow. And there was other things–the photos I got, I had a look inside. It looked like robot parts in there.”

  “...oh, is that so?”

  Momentarily distracted from his scolding, Dexter's face now wore a look of focused contemplation. “What do you mean ‘robot parts’, exactly? How do you know it wasn't just the replacement parts for a factory, hmm?”

  “Because there was a fuckin’ sniper rifle bolted onto a prosthetic arm in there.” He almost laughed. He wanted to laugh, now that he remembered what the cargo had been, but the shame in his stomach swallowed it whole.

  “Um–excuse me??”

  “I'm not crazy. Look at the pics before you give me that face.”

  “I think I'll send them in to our employer before anything else. You know…according to policy, darling.”

  His eyes like discs of jade flicked to Akahoshi's in the rear-view mirror.

  “That ‘snow’ in the boxes that you mentioned,” he said evenly, as if his question was of no consequence at all, but Akahoshi knew him well enough to tell that it mattered a great deal. “Did you happen to sample any of it?”

  The droplet of blood that had leaked from Akahoshi's left nostril rolled down the curve of his lip, sinking into the cracked skin with a sudden sting of pain.

  A flash of irritation clawed at his chest, as he raised a hand to wipe it away, nose still aching and warm.

  “N– no! No! I didn't, god dammit! Why's that your first question, huh? You don't even wanna know if I'm okay, don't even give a fuck if I got hurt, just going around assumin’ I did a couple lines in the back while you weren’t looking?” It was a ridiculous thing to be angry at. It wasn't fair, when he'd been the one with a history of that sort of thing, when Dexter had seen him with his head flung back and mouth covered in foam enough times to count on a full five fingers.

  But he didn't like the disappointment in Dexter's voice. He didn't like the way he sounded hurt.

  “I was making sure because you'd be the one up in front of Yugi trying to explain why you're too under the influence to even string a sentence together!” Dexter retorted in a steadily rising voice. “There's absolutely no need to get so defensive with me! You know what kind of man you are!”

  What kind of man I am. The bile burned Akahoshi's throat.

  “Why’re you so scared of him?” he hissed. “Why do you care what he does with me? I thought you wanted me out of this group, I thought it would make your dick stand up just to hear that I'd gotten kicked on my ass. Are you lyin’ to me? You said you never wanted to see me again, and look where we are now–”

  Akahoshi lost his voice as it was plugged abruptly by the terrible stone in his throat. The car kept on driving, but the two of them sat rotting in the awful silence he left behind. He saw Dexter's hands tense; tense up so much that his long nails carved crescent grooves into the leather wheel.

  “Y-” he began, but Akahoshi cut him right off.

  “You ain’t doing a good job of hating me,” he muttered.

  Silence. Again. He was awash with the feeling of kicking over a self-righting spinning top over and over, until it finally tipped too far and hit the ground still spinning, but soon rolling to a horizontal stop, and his clumsy fingers wondered why it had chosen now of all times to give up on itself.

  The indicator clicked as they waited at an intersection. The side of Akahoshi's cheek that had hit the window was still cold against his teeth.

  “...Why was your nose bleeding?”

  “One of the working chicks walked in on me. Started a fight. Said I couldn't be in the back.”

  Dexter raised his head then, tone sharpening, if that was even possible. “Did you deal with her?”

  “Yeah. But we didn't get any info on Kotaki.” That proud feeling of competency was long dead, like roadkill. But Dexter only clicked his tongue, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly.

  He dug into the glovebox of the car, feeling around for a moment until he brought out a small paper towel. Cautiously, Akahoshi took a hold of it, almost expecting a slap, but they only brushed knuckles in passing, and as Akahoshi held it to his nose the buzzing adrenaline in his system slowly started to fade.

  He drew no attention to it.

  “Actually, we did. It was a short conversation, but rather fruitful if you ask me. I believe I've narrowed his location right down.”

  That made him sit up even straighter. “We did?” You did.

  “Mhm,” Dexter hummed, and as he looked up to glance at his passenger in the mirror he flashed Akahoshi the fakest smile he had ever seen on his handsome, freckled face.

  “We're going to Peach Hotel.”