Chapter 1 - First Day Roadkill

Tokyo, Spring 2038

. . .

Ichiro's first school day ended before it started, with Red Riding Hood surfing a robo-taxi into a wall. And somehow he was caught in the middle!

All his prep work and brooding time wasted—the morning wasn’t even 8:00 AM, and the first tardy bell had yet to ring. That’s how the mind of sixteen year old student and victim—Ichiro Kimura—internalized the accident while shock and awe finally gave way to a dull disappointment. He didn’t get to go to school...

Unfortunately, his verbal recollection of events to the case officer from the Tokyo Metro Police proved less exciting, painful, and frankly more embarrassing. Maybe the boy was just the wrong storyteller for this audience. The bag-eyed policeman shook his shiny, balding head and tapped quiet notes into his smart tablet as Ichiro continued. “So, after my shower, I had some leftover fish with fried tofu for breakfast, oh, and a pastry too. I scarfed them down because I was three minutes behind schedule—”

“Young man, I don’t need everything. Focus on what happened on your walk to school.” The detective cut the boy off in slight, respectful annoyance.

“Oh... I was just trying to be specific... The morning was brisk, kind of chilly? Sorry Officer—”

“Detective Nakamura, please remember that.” The detective interrupted again with a wrinkle of his tie and a shuffling of his lanyard and ID badge. He mumbled within earshot of Ichiro. “My coworkers still don’t...”

Ichiro paused and took a breath. He wanted to chuckle but he held it down as a lump in his throat. He mentally rewound and sped through his delayed morning routine just to make sure he didn’t miss anything. It was a blur of a final ritual prep for his first day at Arakawa Sprint Academy. He finished his breakfast, made sure his bag of things had school things in them including checking twice for his lunch bento. Ichiro made sure to bang down his little brother’s door so he could also get to school on time. Then the boy grabbed his academy overcoat, slipped on loafers, and was out the door.

The April morning was inviting with blue skies and moderate cloud cover. The occasional pink sakura petal flew by through the air. Dust and grass allergens tickled at Ichiro’s nose. It was a Tokyo-grade morning in Itabashi City, Ichiro couldn’t complain as he was still just getting used to the sights and trying to follow his aimless smartphone GPS app to school. Really, the boy was minding his own business like any dutiful teenager would when a new school and new impressions were on the line.

“I was on time by that point—”

“I get the idea, where did things go wrong?” The detective grunted.

Ichiro sighed, “Right...”

His third crosswalk stop was proving extra long as neighborhood cars rolled on by and the traffic light stayed blue. Ichiro tried to make himself tiny and unassuming to his crowded sidewalk audience. He didn’t strike up a conversation with the old woman clutching her two bags of morning groceries. He avoided eye contact with the VR goggles-wearing salaryman shooting him smug side glances.

Part of Ichiro wanted to converse but he put a knuckle to his lips to remind himself of old habits. The old woman might ask Ichiro for directions or on some side quest which will make him late and paint some picture of him for his teacher and classmates. The salaryman could say anything to him and the gaggle of three girls wearing his same class uniform might overhear. Not to mention the lone girl under a red hooded raincoat might start a nasty rumor or two.

Ichiro gave a pair of fake coughs for good measure followed by a real sneeze two minutes after. He rubbed his nose against his cuff and watched as the crowd stepped a foot wide of him. Oh well, so much for his first impressions. His mind drifted to the warnings his childhood friend browbeat into him: Tokyo kids would eat each other alive in pursuit of their social hierarchy. Instead, she would say it was better to be not heard or seen. Ichiro was to read the room, watch his actions, and be mindful of where he went. After a week or two, the boy could then start finding a cautious social placement for a soft-hearted, Luddite village boy like himself.

Yasuko was his only same-age childhood friend, the only freshman year classmate, and a girl... She was Tokyo-born but grew up in his same tiny mountain village in Akita Prefecture where they attended middle school and high school together. A “graduating class” of only two, except they didn’t graduate—their high school closed... He could still see those tearful chocolate eyes under a glaring sunset and quivering lips he refrained himself from yearning for...

Ichiro shook his head, clearing the distant, ancient memory of yesteryear. A quiet sigh left his chapped lips. Yasuko was in the past, somewhere else in Japan and far away from memory and their old stomping grounds. Still, he couldn’t help his cheeks heating up as an old flame murmured inside for the briefest of moments. Would he even be able to find another girl like her again?

Detective Nakamura didn’t need to know that part of Ichiro’s recollection, instead, this was where his morning went horribly wrong. He watched too many new seasonal anime opening episodes the night before. Characters getting struck by lighting, swallowed by portals, and run over by cars. All manner of incidents only to end up in other worlds and dimensions. Ichiro should’ve known he would jinx himself with a similar fate.

Another couple cars rolled on by. A green micro-van, a sporty red sedan. Ichiro didn’t think of anything strange as the traffic light finally flicked from blue to yellow to red. Ahead of their group and the group across the way, the pedestrian signals flashed on and footsteps hit the crosswalk asphalt and rubber.

Ichiro made three long strides across before his confused ears attuned to a unique, low whining sound. An electric car noise, accelerating and approaching fast. Left side? He glanced there but the vehicles were patient and idle as he crossed. No then. Right side? Ichiro glanced right and regretted his sluggish reflexes immediately. A yellow-silver cab with six rowdy passengers in black hoods and masks raced between perpendicular traffic toward him and the crowd!

The boy’s eyes snapped quick to those around him in terror. The salaryman was already jogging across to the other side as if unaware of things in motion. Two school girls attempted to pull the old lady out of the way but at too polite and slow a pace. Ignoring the fragility of the bag-bound milk and egg cartons, Ichiro lobbed himself at the old woman and yelled “Run!” He threw himself at her slouched rear, using his momentum to lift the elder off the ground and onto his classmates who all screamed back in confusion. Like the mashed groceries, the women fell over into a crumpled heap but safe and out of the way.

Ichiro had one more second, he glanced back. Everyone was clear—except one. The girl in the red raincoat!

She was standing in the middle of the road, frozen to her spot in fright. Ichiro didn’t stop to think at the strange sight. In fact, his legs were moving before his brain did. He dove toward the girl screaming on his way down into the tarmac and knowing dreadful things awaited him. His outstretched fingers clawed against the polyester red fabric and heard the zipping noise of his fingernails scratching against it as he gripped on tight. The girl spun on him and in the shadow of her coat, he caught a glimpse of dark hair and an owlish pair of blue eyes.

Ichiro almost stopped in his tracks at the giant cerulean pupils but the hum of the taxi and hoots of the rough riders forced him to stay on course and in reality. A heavy footstep crashed against the ground, drilling his left loafer into the pavement as he spun and pulled the raincoat girl to safety.

“Hey,” she called out in alarm. “They are here for me!”

“Move! They’re going to—”

Ichiro’s second foot fall stumbled as he put too much chest weight forward. He found himself tumbling as the petite girl in his clutches had a momentary second of resistance and shock written across her pale face. She didn’t get another word in and neither did Ichiro. He thought he was going to trip and hit the rough, uneven black top. Instead, a second, tougher material found the two of them first.

Crackles of stone echoed against metal, and screams roared out from nearby and afar along the street. Something hard and white-hot pain hit the boy as Ichiro’s world flashed into stunning gray noise. In the moment, the boy recalled a stuck-still image of a black plastic front bumper barreling at him through the fuzz. He tried to wrap himself around the girl to protect her but his hands found open air and the hazy afterimage of a flung red jacket in the air. Where did she go?

The blinding heat of impact and churning of icy blood within stopped those wayward thoughts. Ichiro stumbled through his own recollection as the gray and black stars faded into a soup of brown, flickering blurriness. After a moment his eyes finally fluttered and soon enough, his vision returned. He was lucky to feel at all as a new enduring numbness fell over him and a sudden need to use the bathroom followed. Cold, warm, and hot. His body was all manner of contradictory temperatures and textures. Finally, his bearings seeped through and Ichiro had vision once more.

His body hunched over something yellow and metallic, rounded at the bottom and pointy at an edge with a slanted flat top: likely the robo-taxi car hood. His lower back pinched against a rough, hostile surface trapping him in place—an aged brick wall. He couldn’t quite see beyond the car hood, and his neck refused to contort against his pain for a better view. A smog of pasty white-yellow smoke filled the rest of his vision along with the scent of melted, rotting glue and charcoal.

What did his old science teacher say back home? Something about colored smoke? He remembered now. Electric fire: puffy-white smoke with a scent. Run, Ichiro needed to run!

The boy, groaned, then growled out in frustration as his spine resisted his first attempts to pull himself free. Through the blotchy smoke, human-shaped shadows shifted but never approached close. He tried to call out for help but his mouth choked against the acrid fire scent and smoke which burned against his dried out throat.

Shuffling a little, Ichiro felt his arms clear the hood of the car and tried his best to ignore the deep, bloody gashes running up and down his wrists and elbows. He pushed and pulled against the vehicle but without a noticeable sense in his legs, he couldn’t break free. Wait, why couldn’t he feel his legs? Was it fear clutching his own heart now—his legs refused to budge, drawing beads of sweat and new panic from his body.

A thought crashed against his delirium, “He was going to die here...” A stray static spark jumped out from beneath the car and shot up his leg into his spine with good timing. A warning—he was in danger even if it wasn’t quite clear from what or where. Ichiro tried again, gasping out against the smoke.

“Help-Help me!”

The brown fuzz of his vision was returning, fading out. The sensation of passing liquid beneath his waist continued to pool then fade too. Pins and needles slipped away into the background... He was, he was... Fading...

Ichiro’s mind wandered once more, vanishing into a evergreen forest hundreds of kilometers into north-central Japan. Akita Prefecture, his old home. The mountain trees sprouted up around him, fading in like a popup book fairy tale. The sun was setting, or was it rising now? A head of mope-like brown hair and dark brown irises stared back at him. She had a piglet nose, and slow-enunciating lips with hints of a smirk between them. Yasuko was saying something to him. What was it?

“Ichiro... Come on, pay attention! Good grades and ambition will get us out of this dead town... Don’t you want that, to go to college and live in the city? Can you just imagine a place you want—different from here?”

Her words came back to him like cold water on a hot summer day. Refreshing, calming, a fantasy he didn’t want to leave. His answer was different now than then. He yearned to escape and see Tokyo, between its glittering skyscrapers and evermore nightlife. But now he was dying, bleeding out trapped between a taxi and a brick wall on some inconsiderate sidewalk in a Tokyo suburb and no future left in mind.

“I’d rather just stay here with you...” Ichiro mumbled out. It would be better that way, he should’ve stayed home...

Yasuko replied back, a pout appearing on her lips. But a different voice shouted through her throat. Her brown eyes bled away, replaced by wide blue ones with a hint of red at their center. The eyes were unblinking, and missed the light of life beneath the shade of smoke and fire. Ichiro recognized the features: the red raincoat girl. She was saying, yelling something.

“Stay with me, do not fall asleep! The ambulance is on its way, can you get yourself free?”

Ichiro’s eyes fluttered and his head rocked back and forth as his conscious fell victim to excess blood loss.

“I’m alright... Right here...”

A series of pats to his face forced Ichiro to rock back and focus through a new bout of white-hot pain.

“Stay still, this is going to hurt! But stay awake.”

Metal groaned and something jostled violently against Ichiro’s chest as new space was made by a forceful pair of unseen hands. The boy slumped down and forward, the sidewalk felt quite soft and comfortable in a moment like this.

“I... I want to sleep... Let me, thanks...”

The rough hands caught him again and pulled at his eyelids, forcing him awake once more. The blue-and-red eyes were back, staring hard into his own dark brown orbs. Unblinking eyes met unblinking eyes. The girl’s irises spun with rings within rings, Ichiro thought he even saw a corporate logo in the pupils somewhere.

“What-what are you?” He gasped out in confusion. He tasted iron on his tongue, even as he stayed awake his senses were dulling into nothing. The raincoat girl answered him but he couldn’t make it out as she dragged him through the churning smoke and fire.

Ichiro’s head scratched against the uneven asphalt once more despite the girl’s attempts to cradle his head. The ground was soft and inviting. But more than that, this thing, SHE was his sleep demon. He couldn’t get that deep blue and the shot of red out of his mind.

Blue like the sky, deep red like the blood trailing after him... Ichiro faded into nothing. His story for Detective Nakamura began anew elsewhere.