Enji Hasegawa

Chapter 1

Enji Hasegawa

He hurried out of the school gates, holding the urge to sprint. He didn’t want anybody to see him running and spreading rumors, and later, being hounded by the track and field recruiters to join their club, as had happened when he was back in middle school.

This high school didn’t have a club that he liked like his old school. But due to his parents’ recent separation, he had to move in with his grandparents to another part of Tokyo and transfer to this school. So, he was in the going-home club.

Enji looked at his smartphone’s map app. His destination was an obscure thrift store that he discovered while searching for old computer parts. He was an otaku of Eight-bit computers, and the fault resided with his parents. They were both programmers and introduced him to the hobby of personal computers and software from an early age.

He hurried. He had called them after visiting all the electronic stores in Akihabara, and to his surprise, they had an ancient Commodore 64 in working order—an extremely hard-to-find computer in Japan, as it had not had much success there compared to the United States. The thrift store closed early, so he sprinted. The map on the app showed him a shortcut through a park.

As he ran, he talked to himself, “Sousuke will be so jealous.” In middle school, he joined the computer club, where he, along with Sousuke and Hajime, dreamed of owning several 8-bit machines and writing programs for them. They loved retro games.

Enji reached the park. He crossed the gate and ran toward the other exit on the next block. He cut through a field where a couple of kids were playing soccer.

“Hey, get out of the way!” shouted one of the kids.

“Sorry,” he uttered, but immediately his sight was attracted to something in his peripheral vision. “Fireflies?”

The soccer ball hit him on the side of his head, and he stumbled forward, losing his footing.

Everything around him went from late-afternoon bright to moonlit dark. “Damned kid. He aimed at me with that ball.”

To avoid falling, he grabbed the person in front of him. Strange, where did they come from? To his surprise, it was a girl—a very gorgeous girl in a cosplay outfit. An elf? The girl, her face showing horror, shouted something in a foreign language.

Enji realized that he was holding the girl’s arms, basically leaning on her.

“Whoa, whoa! Sorry, sorry. I didn’t mean to touch you!” He backed away from her. That was when he saw the two other girls.

Cat and dog ears? Is there an anime convention nearby? Their costumes are perfect, even the tails move. “Hi.” He waved at them. Turning to the elf girl, he began to apologize again, and that’s when he saw the two moons in the sky. Astonished, he shouted, “One is red... the other...” He turned to the other cosplayers while pointing at the moons, and the last thing he saw before everything turned black was a thick tree branch coming toward his head, brandished by the dog girl.

***

He coughed and snorted after receiving a bucketful of water to his face, bringing him back from the realm of dreams. His body ached, especially his nape. Enji tried to wipe his eyes and massage his head, but he couldn’t move his hands. They were bound to the floor with chains. He squinted at the person with the bucket. After a few blinks, he could make out their appearance.

Enji didn’t know whether to be afraid or amused. The person in front of him was a woman, at least she had those attributes. She appeared to be in her thirties; her scowling face had several scars, and her left eye was covered with a patch, like some underworld thug or pirate. That scared him. But the foxlike ears at the top of her head and the nervous twitching of her silver-white tail rendered the situation into absurdity, and her multicolored clothes, resembling a princess from a theme park of a famous rodent, obliterated even further the seriousness of the whole situation.

The woman barked an order. Bark was the closest analogy he could find for what she said because he couldn’t understand a word.

The girl with cat ears gave her the soccer ball. She put it in front of his nose and asked something.

“Sorry, I don’t understand your language.” Enji tried to smile while looking at her ears, which twitched.

The woman asked or said a few more things. Enji just shook his head and replied, “Sorry.”

The woman left the room, and Enji took the opportunity to study his surroundings. The windowless room or cell where he was chained was small, perhaps four tatamis in area, and devoid of any furnishing. No bars or doors separated him from the main room, which was bigger. In the far wall of the bigger room, the cat-eared girl leaned against the wall, keeping a watchful eye on him. She’s cute. He thought. Her attire consisted of tight brown pants and a leather Bolero jacket over a white blouse. Her hair was jet-black, the same color as her animal ears and tail, and her green eyes reflected the light from the wall lantern.

“Where am I?”

The girl’s tail stiffened for an instant, but she didn’t reply.

“Can you release my arms?”

She shifted her weight from one leg to the other, which was all the reaction he got from his plea.

Enji was about to open his mouth again, but the cat-eared girl stepped out of the room when the eyepatch fox-woman entered, accompanied by another person.

Is that a person? The newcomer wore a long, hooded green robe that hid their body and feet. The only visible parts were the hands and the face. If anyone were to think of a walking skeleton, that would be the closest definition of the robed one. The greyish skin was pulled tight against the bones of the hands and skull, where red, sunken eyes darted nervously around like those of a scared animal.

The ‘skeleton’ looked at Enji, and he almost wet his pants. They opened their mouth and, with a hissing voice, said something, pointing at him.

“Ah, ah. P-please...,” Enji babbled incoherently out of fear.

The robed person turned to the fox-woman and asked for something. She gave them a leather and metal collar. Raising the collar high about their head, the ‘skeleton’ chanted a monotonous, long string of words. The collar was engulfed in a purplish haze for a few seconds, then it was back to normal. The fox-woman took the collar and approached Enji. He realized what she intended to do and tried to back away, but the chains didn’t let him.

With the collar fastened around his neck, the woman brought her face close to him and uttered a few words. After waiting for a reply, she spoke again, and seeing that Enji only shook his head from side to side, she turned to the robed person and angrily began to shout at them.

The green-robed mage bent closer to Enji and began to recite a long string of words. As they concentrated on the incantation, a few drops of sweat appeared on the greyish forehead. Enji, at first, tried to avoid looking at the skull-like face in front of him, but some morbid impulse made him stare at the hooded person. The head was not a skull; it just gave that impression. Some hair could be seen under their hood. He was thin, very thin, or maybe he was a she. Enji wondered what kind of life or suffering had led the person in front of him to get so emaciated. Still, the red eyes were full of life and energy and seemed out of place in the withered face. Thinking about it, he doesn’t seem that scary.

The mage slowly rose and turned to face the fox-eared woman. With a tired voice, he seemed to be making some demands. There was a back-and-forth, unintelligible banter between the two. Enji looked at them, resigned to his fate. After a few moments, he began to hear an echo in the words of his quarreling captors. He shook his head and concentrated on what they were saying.

“[Akudi labasde tepsi] at least two gold coins! I was drained after casting the [sarauma].”

“[Makapa phe!] One and a half [lisose]. That’s my top,” the woman counteroffered.

“I agree only if you include a pouch of salt.”

“Settled. Then we have a deal.” The woman smiled.

That’s when Enji realized that he understood the words they were saying.