Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 55: Japan Branch (3)

Dragon Raja 3

“Fine, fine. Let’s hurry up then…”

From the pit came hysterical wails. Oyama was in utter despair. It was only now that he fully realized he had completely misunderstood these people. Rather than calling them thugs, it would be more accurate to call them psychopaths. No wonder they were so happy and joyful while pouring the cement; their singing was filled with genuine happiness. What was this about “The pier is father’s yoke, and my brother and I stand on either end”? These guys must have spent their childhoods happily pouring people into cement piles, side by side. To them, this wasn’t some brutal, heartless act—it was a cherished childhood memory. They couldn’t care less about extracting confessions.

“Enough, stop playing with him.” Chisei flicked away his cigarette and jumped into the Hummer. “Compared to him, you guys are the real psychopaths, aren’t you?”

“It takes a psychopath to scare a psychopath.” Crow patted the lime off his hands and smiled slightly. “When two psychopaths meet, there’s a fifty percent chance they’ll hit it off and a fifty percent chance they’ll find each other disgusting. This one disgusts me.”

“Honestly, giving up halfway like this… I’m a little reluctant to abandon my work,” Yasha sighed as he ran to the Hummer with Crow. The car door was still open, and the Hummer had already started accelerating.

“Sakura, I’ve obtained the name of the test subject. Search the archives for ‘Sakurai Akira.’ The target has used the genetic drug to enhance his bloodline; he’s evolving, with a strong inclination towards aggression and killing. Change Sakurai Akira’s color code to red—highly dangerous target. Search airports, railway networks, highways, waterways, hot spring inns, hotels, and hospitals—find him as quickly as possible. He may use an alias or fake documents, but he won’t be able to resist killing. Investigate areas with recent clusters of homicides, particularly where the victims were female, violated, and dismembered. Contact Tachibana; I request permission to execute Sakurai Akira!” Chisei made the call as he drove.

“What is the current level of the target’s bloodline?”

“It’s known to be an A-Rank! A rampaging A-Rank Hybrid!”

“Understood. Begin the hunt immediately!”

Chisei threw the phone down. “Crow! Notify the logistics department to start preheating the helicopter! When I arrive at the airport, I want it ready to take off at any moment!”

Oyama Ryuzo soaked in the meter-and-a-half-deep cement mortar, feeling himself slowly solidify in the night wind. In his entire life, he had never felt so much like he wanted the police to show up—even if they showed up with an arrest warrant and threw him in jail. Anything was better than falling into the hands of these insane people.

Still dark for another six hours. When dawn breaks, workers will discover it—that half-poured concrete pillar… it should have set quite well by then, right?

The train rumbled northward, leaving a white trail of steam through the mountains.

It was an old steam locomotive, far slower than the usual high-speed trains, with a destination all the way up in Hokkaido. The train stopped at every small station, making for a total journey time of twelve hours. Such a slow train would generally be dismissed by many, but every spring, quite a number of young people chose to take this train. It ran along mountain tracks laid before World War II, through beautiful, rare scenery. Most of the passengers were high school students on their graduation trips and young couples. Being in the vintage metal carriages with someone they secretly liked for twelve hours, watching the mountain ranges, washed clean like fresh water, fade away one by one, made every girl want to rest her head on the shoulder of a boy.

The carriage in which Sakurai Akira sat was only half full. The boys and girls excitedly pointed at the sights passing by. Akira subtly sniffed the air, taking in every scent in the carriage. His sense of smell was now on par with that of a wild predator—he could even pick up the scent of the girl across from him wearing a beige woolen dress. She was getting aroused as the boy next to her discreetly kissed her earlobe, her body releasing a surge of tempting hormones. Akira monitored these scents to control the carriage, searching for suitable prey among the passengers.

This was his fifteenth day on the run, and so far, he had hunted fifteen women.

Akira, twenty-three, worked as a janitor at a church school—a place where he was also an alumnus. The school was located deep in the mountains of Kobe, surrounded by thick stone walls topped with electrified barbed wire. Once, a brave student had wrapped themselves in insulation and managed to escape, only to get lost in the mountains afterward. When they were finally found by the rescue team, they were severely dehydrated. The school was a “care facility”—for kids who had been rejected from other schools, like Akira, who had been deemed to have “violent tendencies.” Each night, the nuns would kiss the children’s foreheads before the brawny guards locked the doors with chains.

When Akira was a child, he often sat in the middle of the playground, staring at the sky. But every time he looked up, it was always the same square piece of sky. He would sit on the grass and give each cloud a name, but by the next day, all those clouds with their names were gone, leaving only him behind on the same patch of grass. The school only taught up to high school level, and no university would accept students like him. So, Akira was internally hired as the janitor. He got his own single room, but he still wasn’t allowed to leave the campus. Every night, his door was still locked by the guards. The doctor said his violent tendencies were not cured yet, and he would be a danger to society if let loose.

Akira knew the real reason he was sent to the “care” school—it was because of his bloodline. He came from the mysterious Sakurai family, a clan with a long heritage of draconic blood. When he was five, the elders had his bloodline evaluated, and they determined that his bloodline was flawed, and he was prone to “berserk” episodes. He was taken away from his family and sent to the church school deep in the mountains. This school was largely funded by his family, and his parents never visited him again. Instead, he was visited by various men in black.

Every year on his birthday, one of those men would come to visit him as his “guardian.” They all wore well-tailored black suits, embroidered with intricate, terrifying demon designs on the linings. Akira knew these men were the so-called enforcers. In this country, every Hybrid was monitored by the enforcers, who maintained order in the Hybrid society from the shadows. Some enforcers seemed quite laid-back, bringing him pastries and carp streamers, while others were so stern they couldn’t be looked at directly. But to Akira, they were all the same. If needed, both the kind and the strict enforcers would mercilessly execute someone like him, a dangerous target.

Every enforcer asked him almost the same questions. Do you ever get agitated and lose control? Have you fallen for any girl in your class? Do you masturbate? Is it nightly or irregular? Is there anyone you really dislike? Do you want to kill them?

Each question was like a sharp scalpel, slicing Akira open for inspection. He never thought about resisting. The enforcers’ blood was more potent and stable than his, which was why they were the enforcers, and he was the prisoner. All Akira had inherited from his parents was a “trash bloodline,” whereas the enforcers inherited “elite bloodlines.” Trash bloodlines increased the risk of going berserk, while elite bloodlines granted Hybrids incomparable power. The enforcers scored his responses, marking their assessment sheet while sending his health records back to the family by fax. If his file got a green or yellow label, then he passed for the day. An orange label would mean increased monitoring, but a red label… Akira didn’t know what the outcome would be and didn’t want to know. Every evaluation, he was marked green, indicating he was safe. The enforcers reassured him that if he could maintain that level until he was forty, he could be granted freedom. They would no longer question him behind bulletproof glass but visit his home once a year.

Series Navigation

<< Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 54: Japan Branch (2)Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 56: Japan Branch (4) >>