The Night That Swallows All Deceptions

Blissfully unaware of her stalker, Raven really spent a few hours teaching children things they would never use in daily life. For instance, how could the cultural context of Hamlet help anyone escape a stalker? She also met with the other volunteers to discuss an upcoming fundraising event. Those pointless debates grated on my ears; time wasted that could be used to repair the orphanage building.

I couldn’t stress how much of an eyesore those weirdly shaped cracks were, a constant presence in Raven’s visual field. Since I shared senses with her, I was forced to notice these defects in the background. This operation was a parade of poverty. Nothing more. Helping a few more children get slightly better scores in their public exams wouldn’t save a single wilting life around the world. Raven had no reason to be smug about her achievement here.

Still, I had better things to do than ruin Raven’s playtime. Specifically, planning how to deal with Raven’s stalker. Tamura Jiyunko was her name. Her name sounded like ‘Junk-o’, so I would go with that. Age twenty-eight. I tried to access her residence, but my quasi-omniscience returned only unknown.

Unknown? Did she not have a set place to call home?

She was a programmer on the surface, but her real gig was as an assassin. Down payment. Would only accept new clients on a recommendation basis. The human trash that she was made the nickname ‘Junk-o’ that much more fitting.

Her client was a politician who lost his job and his freedom after Raven uncovered his human trafficking side hustle. It was also the story that launched Raven’s news blog into popularity.

But how did she find out who Raven was? Raven always took care to keep her true identity hidden. This query returned echoes of the unknown once again. At this point, I knew for certain that either another horseman or an ancient magic artifact was involved. The question was which horseman or which artifact. That, I needed more information to solve.

I also had to account for the two bootleg magic items that my quasi-omniscience could actually detect. Lots of information flow was required in data centers just to conjure up a tiny bit of magical effect. In short, magic items were expensive. For Junk-o to have two, she must mean business. But, magic or not, I still knew about the abilities and weaknesses of the tools. That meant I could counter them. If only everything were so straightforward.

What I knew about Junk-o far eclipsed what she knew about Raven. She was still at the stage of gathering information online, not even physically tailing Raven yet. That said, I couldn’t bear to be at the mercy of her whims. She would regret targeting my host. Or she might not even get the chance to have regrets.

As my thoughts occupied me, the sun retired into the night, and Raven finally left the decrepit cesspit that was the orphanage. She stayed at a nearby inn for the night. Too fatigued to get to either of the three properties she owned: the two apartments in the middle of Tokyo and the cottage two hours away.

Her dinner was only two egg sushi rolls bought at a convenience store, and she shoved a handful of white chocolate down her throat as dessert. To congratulate herself for a good day’s work, as the excuse went. That amount of sugar could almost be classified as self-harm.

Her day ended with a slump onto the puffy bed when it was only barely past nine, enveloped by the warm yellow lighting and scent of cheap air freshener.

“Are you really going to sleep now?” I asked. She had so much to do that she had every reason to stay up a while longer. Midnight was a better time to fall asleep.

“What? Do you want girl talk?”

“Aren’t you curious about how your high school crushes are doing now?”

“No, thanks.” And she closed her eyes. Even after I tolerated her attitude, she wouldn’t listen to me once. I thought about yelling and screaming to keep her awake. But that would just seem desperate. And I wasn’t desperate at all.

It was just that I hated the night. Even as the body and soul of my host drifted to sleep, my spirit remained awake. It could have meant lonely nights; it could have meant boring nights. If only that were the case.

The deaths of people all around the globe. Faintly lurking when my host was awake, taking center stage in my mind at night. Unlike the pure information that my quasi-omniscience fed me, these terminations were vivid, a faint pop of a balloon, repeated over, building to a cacophony of clapping. The final act of a play called life, curtains falling in hundreds of theaters at once.

That one was strangled by her husband. I watched. Nothing I could do. Another one jumped. Too much pressure to over-perform. I watched. Only able to count the floors. A distinct one again. This time, overdosing on heroin. I watched the chemical structure of the culprit, a real reaper, as opposed to the imposter ‘Death’ that was me.

What is the point of knowing, when knowing won’t change anything?

The room’s yellow light became the color of hell; the air freshener smelled as if it were covering up rotting corpses. The presence of endings swirled around me. I readjusted my attention to the information about the assassin. Her preferences, her fears, her dreams, her experiences. I had to learn more about her, defeat her, and save a few more lives in the process. And then, the rest of the deaths would cease to matter. They must cease to matter.

On the bright side, the slumber of the host wasn’t merely a burden to bear. It gave me another way of knowing things beyond just my mental search engine. I triangulated the likely area of Junk-o’s residence from the bits and pieces that I already knew. The traces led me to think that Junk-o lived in a suburban neighborhood. Narrowed it down to a few blocks in Nishioizumi.

Interrupting my search, another person died. A traffic accident in Recife, Brazil.

But I had to focus on my task. Checking each house. Starting from the ones I deemed the most probable.

That was when someone died again. Falling from a ladder in Cape Town, South Africa.

A worthless distraction. I shook it off, resuming my investigation.

Until…

Oh, what do we have here?

I found something interesting, something very promising indeed.

***

The first thing Raven did in the morning was check her website for comments and updates, while still lying in the lodging bed. The responses to her articles that she might need to address, recent developments in the stories that she had been covering. She prided herself on not requiring any disclosure of personal information on her website, a rarity on most of the Internet nowadays. Personal IDs, biometric data, and selfies, websites sucked them in like a filter-feeding whale.

“It seems like your website is going well. Good for you.” I tried to strike up a conversation.

Raven sighed. She closed her laptop with a slam imbued with irritation, acting like my existence was a nuisance for her, when I had so much to offer.

“What now?”

“I have a lead for you.”

“Are you making fun of me? I’m not some mouthpiece for the rich and powerful; leave your propaganda to phony journalists like Ueshima Hideka.” She had to drag a random person into our conversation, for no valid reason at all.

“Trust me, I would if I could. And I’m not forcing you to write anything against your values. I’m sure even your mother would encourage you to hear people out.”

“Don’t mention my mother like she’s some magic word to disarm me.”

“Don’t use similes as if they were logical arguments.”

Raven glared at the innocent wall, an object to project her aggression onto. “What’s the lead?”

I told her an address in Nishioizumi, claiming that it was related to the underground artifact trade. That wasn’t a lie; I merely exaggerated how direct the connection between the two was. She still hesitated to, in her words: “waste my morning on info from this clown.” The clown was referring to me, if it wasn’t clear. And I wasn’t the slightest bit offended.

“In case you can’t already tell, I live inside your head. If I were a clown, you would be too. And unless you want Ueshima Hideka to leave you in the dust, pursue every lead.” I had to thank her for bringing up her rival, because that name was the push she needed. No competition, no progress, as the saying goes. Raven wasn’t entirely convinced, but she still caved in and gave me a chance.

A three-hour trip brought us back into the city. Raven put on a lighter disguise this time: dyed her hair a slight brown, redrew her skin tone brighter, and applied crazy eye shadow.

The normal-looking house loomed before us. It blended in with the rest, unremarkable in the row of structures taking the sunlight in different glimmers. To my quasi-omniscience, beyond the door was a black hole, where no information could escape the vanishing point. Raven pressed the doorbell. A faint tremble in her motion. What a scaredy-cat this girl was.

Footsteps. Muffled but audible.

Lock clicked.

Handle turned.

Door swung open.

A figure stood in front of us. Not Junk-o. I knew she wasn’t home already. She wasn’t the target of our visit this time.

This person had a face I had never seen before. But it was familiar in the sense that she was a stock image of attractiveness, a girl you could easily find on the billboards of Tokyo. Dark red eyes that conveyed no threat. Even in heels, yes, she wore heels in her house, even in those, she was half a head shorter than Raven. In a defenseless nightgown, not the type a woman would typically wear to greet a stranger.

One more thing. A detail that told me instantly the identity of the girl. The tip of each strand of her black hair was coated with white.