Chapter 0.7

Mamoru Fujimoto was cold. Very cold. He had ignored his mother’s wishes for him to wear a muffler and his sister’s wool gloves out of a young man’s sense of pride and now regretted his decision immensely because, for the third time now, he was very cold.

When the new members of Section Eight arrived at a museum at the opening of the botanic garden, they were reminded that the university grounds were over ten hectares in size, and Reiko had given no direction of where to look or even begin.

“Should we split up maybe?” Miyuki suggested.

“She didn’t even tell us what we were looking for,” Mamoru shrugged. “You think she’ll notice if I leave work early today?”

Fujiko ignored the both of them and walked forward on her own, making her way past the gate entrance and up a clay colored slope.

“Hey,” Mamoru called after her. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To look around,” she answered without looking back.

“Show off,” Mamoru frowned.

“Kazama’s quite cool, isn’t she?” Miyuki said.

“She’s the generic silent type,” he muttered. “I’m not interested.”

“You aren’t interested in her magic?”

“Why would I be?”

“Well, because!” Miyuki leapt in front of Mamoru’s face. The ribbons tying her hair swooned. “You’ve never seen it before, right? The way she gave instructions to the imaginarium to disappear.”

“Isn’t that what we’re all doing?”

“No,” Miyuki shook her head furiously. “Have you never taken a magical linguistics course before, Fujimoto?”

“I’m not a nerd like you.”

“Well, the literature is very clear. Magical incantations are not about instruction, they’re a form of suggestion,” Miyuki explained. “Incantations are vernacular translations of our motives into primordial Questions, which prompts imaginarium to take form; it’s magic that then decides whether and how to act in accordance with the world’s existing natural principles. What Kazama did is exceedingly rare. I haven’t read about it since–”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with you.”

After checking the time on his phone, Mamoru decided it was too early in the afternoon to return home, even for a first day. He decided on a stroll first. He would walk through the gardens living on the edge of winter, and then he would return home after nothing of import happened.

Life in the civil service had not been Mamoru’s first choice. His mother had encouraged it, saying that a civil mage or researcher was one of the few (ethically viable) ways of making money with his talents. Mamoru would have protested harder, but then his sister gave birth, then his brother in law lost his job, and then one thing led to another…

Mamoru tossed his head back and looked at the arrival of dusk. The sun’s diurnal course over Sapporo was coming to an early end. The sky stood silent. It was like gazing at the old photographs of his father on the mantelpiece in his living room, each picture lit in the morning by incensed candles and painted in burnt sepia.

“Wait,” he murmured. “Did I light any this morning–”

“What are you doing here?”

A hand, Miyuki’s, Mamoru realized, shoved him to the side. Where he was standing just a fraction of time ago, a blade drenched in rusty imaginarium had punctured the air.

A sinewy appendage fastened itself to the blade. Following its crooked, aberrant form to its end, Mamoru’s eyes fell on the silhouette of a blank faced man hunched forward in a blue police officer’s uniform. His third arm, a tumorous mass of concentrated imaginarium, had crystallized into his back.

“Mamoru!” Miyuki cried. “Are you okay?”

It was a useless question. Mamoru couldn’t speak. His lips quivered too much, and it took every ounce of energy to not vomit his breakfast out. His palms spread open. Instinct demanded him to incant something.

Incant, or die.

Miyuki swiveled on her heels. She pushed and dashed before the assailant. The gemstones on her knuckles gleamed like pearls, while the sword spiraling above the man’s back fell to meet her hands.

Just like before, the imaginarium shattered beneath Miyuki’s strike. It flinched and recoiled as the tip of the sword faded to dust. Miyuki drew back her arm for a second thrust, but the imaginarium above reanimated itself as a pair of swords in place of one and flailed at her like wild vines.

“This is not good,” the man moaned. “This is not good.”

Miyuki’s vivid red shoes sank into the garden path. Every parry sent sparks of imaginarium bursting into the evening air and buried her feet in several more millimeters of dirt. The assailant snapped his hands in front of him.

“Incant,” the man muttered. “Sacrifice. Blood.”

Two stricken veins of imaginarium fountained from the bottom of his wrists like a burst capillary. Miyuki weaved out of the way of the first tendril, but not the second. Its tip, writhing with fingerlike appendages, caught her in the neck and contracted. Miyuki’s hands jumped to her neck to pull where the tendrils threatened to crush her throat.

The two fractured swords, hanging above her like vultures, saw their opportunity and dived for the killing stroke.

The first blade aimed for her head. Miyuki pulled her body to the side with enough clearance that the sword only gashed her cheek and chipped her ear and the imaginarium squeezing the air out of her throat.

The second blade darted for her waist. Miyuki released one of her hands trying to pry off the appendage and snagged the sword in midair.

Warm blood flowed.

It dampened the black leather of Miyuki’s glove and crawled down her trembling forearm in a race of four, viscous lines. The point of the blade grazed the white frills on her dress but went no further. Miyuki gasped, clenched her hand, and crushed the imaginarium into glitter.

“Incantation,” she croaked.

The thick vein coiled around her neck relaxed then tightened again. It lifted her into the air then flung her into a tree several meters behind where Mamoru knelt with his knees folded despondently beneath him. Bark and branch snapped and the trunk groaned as leaves and kicked up dirt obscured the base of the tree.

“Oh this is not good at all!” the man screamed. “How dare you desecrate this site with your presence, your imaginarium?”

Miyuki was still breathing when the dust settled. She laid back against the tree. A thin blue aura, her ward, had cradled her body when it had crashed into the trunk.

The man inched forward towards her.

“The botanical garden is supposed to be closed for the winter,” he mumbled. “No. It is closed. It has been closed. It’s closed now. No visitors. In or out. No visitors. I’m sorry, but I, Officer Kosuke Sakurai of the Hokkaido Prefectural Police, shall issue the paperwork for your immediate arrest and execution.”

“Freeze.”

Officer Sakura’s right foot halted midstep. The imaginarium around him stilled. A look of surprise awakened behind the officer’s stale pupils. His eyes darted in erratic, concentric circles until they centered on a girl walking out from the shadow of a nearby tree, imaginarium pouring from the crevices of her open left eye.

“Someone who can command imaginarium?” Sakurai smiled through gritted teeth. “You think you can hold me with that eye and mouth alone, girl?”

“Silence. Fall. Disappear.”

The officer’s mouth squeezed closed. His legs gave out from under him and he collapsed to the floor, his arms locked behind his back, while the imaginarium swirling around him withered.

“Are you okay, Kobayashi?” Fujiko asked. Her eye remained trained on Sakurai.

“Thank you Kazama,” Miyuki replied in ragged breaths. “I’m fine. But Fujimoto–”

“I can sense him. He’s in shock,” Fujiko winced. “We must leave and inform Captain Nakamura. I cannot hold him for much longer.”

“You cannot hold me at all,” came a dreadful rasp. Officer Sakurai had pried his mouth open with threads of imaginarium. His swollen eyes bled with fury. “Incantation. Sacrifice. Blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood...”

The imaginarium around Fujiko’s eyes flared like a fire alarm. She let out a pained cry and grasped her eye with both hands.

Officer Kosuke Sakurai picked himself up. Two, sickly arms fell limp at his side, drained of color and muscle. He belched a sickening laugh. The crystallized imaginarium on his back bloomed. His spine spewed forth a field of disfigured strands, each holding a serrated edge at their ends.

Sakurai picked the weakest target among them, a young Mamoru, who lay frozen on his knees and yet despite the wintry air, could not feel even the cold shredding at his skin. His eyes, dazed, gleaned from the sky a field of roses.

Then, they all lunged at him.

“Mamoru!” Miyuki screamed.

Before the end, Mamoru heard an exasperated sigh.

“What a troublesome kid. Where’d your tough guy act go?”

Reiko Nakamura crossed the length of the garden path and stepped in front of him. She spread out her arms, and a hailstorm of mangled thorns skewered her from head to toe.