The Sweeper Visits a Girl's House, part one

A tower of apartments surrounded Kuroiwa, Chigusa, and Shiyuri, spanning seven to eight floors; its narrow canopy obstructed by itself, only letting a modicum amount of sunlight touch the cemented ground, of which had multiple cracks in it already. It reminded Kuroiwa of those ‘monster buildings’ in Hong Kong—apartments housing hundreds, even thousands of residents in a narrow space.

However, there weren’t thousands of residents in this apartment. Instead, all that met them were the suspicious gazes of the elderly, few of them they were, walking the central thoroughfare between all the buildings.

“Damn. Those old people don’t like us?” asked Kuroiwa as he snuck glances onto the elderly staring at them loitering in the courtyard.

“Don’t worry about them,” responded Shiyuri reassuringly. “They’re a little shocked I brought a young man into the block. Were you expecting a livelier neighborhood?”

Kuroiwa shook his head. “Maybe I expected somewhere with less geriatrics.”

“You expected me to hang out with younger people?” she asked while eyeing the sweeper with cynicism. “You are aware I kinda farm younger Neo Shibuyans as a hobby, right?”

Surprised with her terminology, Chigusa cocked her head and asked Shiyuri, “Farm? Like… you grow people from the ground?”

“No, I mean, ‘farming’. As in the video game term.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

Kuroiwa scratched his head and egged the girls to move on.

“Yeah, I know exactly what she means, but let’s just say she’s up to no good,” he said in an impatient tone. “Now. Your place?”

With a giggle and a snide comment on Kuroiwa’s impatience, of which he completely ignored, Shiyuri directed them to a set of decrepit stairs. Each stairwell per floor had one window, its glass shattered and left unfixed for what seemed to be a long while now—but at least no glass shards remained on the ground. Possibly cleaned up so as to not inconvenience anyone using the stairs.

The elevators were out-of-commission as well. Shiyuri explained that no maintenance crew had come by to make repairs anywhere in the compound for nearly two years now. It’s not as if anybody cared anyway; even the ‘elderly’ in Neo Shibuya were capable of climbing up flights of stairs on a daily basis.

Kuroiwa lamented this. Not even he could manage five floors every other hour, everyday.

As they went up to the fourth floor, and the deeper they walked through the dirty hallways overlooking the central shared courtyard of the apartments, Kuroiwa began to notice that most of these apartments were, in fact, vacant.

“Is it really this empty here?” he asked while peering into an apartment whose door was ajar, revealing the uninhabited room within.

“Yeah, this place is half a ghost town. No one actually wants to live here. The rent is horribly cheap but, as you’ve already seen, the amenities… leave a lot to be desired.”, Shiyuri said, leading both Kuroiwa and Chigusa down the hall. “And it’s not like Neo Shibuya is too overpopulated. Consider this place a relic of the past.”

Chigusa nodded and stroked her black face half-mask. “Yes. But ultimately, it was decided this place would not be demolished. I don’t know the details why.”

“Neither do I,” said Shiyuri. “But it makes a great place to operate out of the grid.”

She then stopped in front of a plain wooden door. The door had a doorknob, was made of regular but sturdy redwood, and small stained glass panes to the side—barely big enough for an adult’s hand to slip into.

“We’re here.”

“Huh?”

Kuroiwa was surprised. He observed how plain the door was, and made a note on how it was missing a few key things he’d come to expect from a door nowadays.

“Where’s the digital lock? And the card key lock with the numpads and stuff?”

“There isn’t any,” Shiyuri answered. “This is a traditional door in your sense.”

“I see,” said Kuroiwa flatly. “Damn. Non-techy stuff suddenly feels so weird.”

Chigusa noticed Shiyuri staring at the doorknob, motionless and looking all frustrated, pouting and eyes narrowed. She then went up to her and asked her what was wrong.

“Miss Shiyuri, is something the matter?”

“Forgot my keys inside.”

“You what?” Kuroiwa huffed.

Shiyuri smiled straight into Kuroiwa’s eyes like a troubled puppy. “Do me a favor, would you?”

Kuroiwa backed off with a hands-off expression. “Don’t look at me. I never learned to pick locks.” he said earnestly.

Shiyuri reassured him that was not the case. “That’s not it,” she said. She then curled her hand into a gun-like gesture and waved it. “All I need you to do is shoot the lock from the inside.”

“...Riiight,” sighed Kuroiwa. “Is this why you told me to bring a gun?”

“Bingo!”

“Okay, but why though?” Kuroiwa stopped backing off and eyed the door in its entirety.

“So we can break the lock from both sides. Better than breaking down the entire door.”

Kuroiwa shrugged. There was nothing else to be said about ‘employing’ a mercenary to open a door for someone through gunfire, except… unbelievable.

“So you really do think I can do it, huh?”

“You can’t?”

“...Don’t underestimate me.”

He signaled the girls to stand back and pulled his trusty revolver from inside his business coat. As he loaded the chamber with rounds, he had to ask Shiyuri something important.

“You’re sure I won’t alert anybody with the gunshot?”

“People here don’t usually react to gunfire. It’s dime-a-dozen in this neighborhood. Unless we were followed, you shouldn’t be alerting anyone important,” she shrugged and continued. “...Besides, it’s not the first they’ve heard from my block.”

“You’re scaring me.”

Kuroiwa pulled the hammer and aimed at the glass panes. He closed an eye and aimed carefully, trying to make out a solid wall he could ricochet his bullet from inside.

A solid concrete wall and a few wall-attached lamps.

It would have to do.

It wasn’t the first time Kuroiwa has shot into a closed room to open it from the inside. And sometimes, somebody just needs to take a bullet to the head while they hide away in the safest of rooms, out of harm’s way. The Sweeper pulled it off once—and the police wrote it off as one of those ‘closed room murder mysteries’ that’s ever so popular in fiction.

Even in the most undesirable commissions, his bullet would land where it needed to.

And so it did.

The loud plink sounded from the other side of the door, before either of the girls even registered the loud gunfire. Chigusa ducked and covered her dog-like ears, cupping them into her head. In a moment it was done, and Shiyuri watched unfazed as if the damage to her property didn’t matter at all. Chigusa rose from her knees and shook herself back into focus, as she uttered a simple, “My turn.”.

From a small yet dense metal cube, she unfolded the same mallet she used to knock Shiyuri out—the so-called ‘bug zapper’, and slammed it right at the doorknob.

The knob plopped to the ground with a satisfying ‘ping’, and the door swung open with a high-pitched, slow creak. A tinge of sunlight coming from a window opposite the door peeked through the gap. Inside was an old, very typical single-resident Japanese apartment from Kuroiwa’s time, with its walls old but clearly repainted within the last few years. A humble bed laid in one corner, and a bathroom near the entrance.

Shiyuri then walked into the room and invited Kuroiwa and Chigusa in.

“Come on in. No need to take off your shoes.”