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Chapter Forty
Expiation
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The door clicked.
Ren took his hand off the doorknob and turned his attention to the room in front of him. Race was still asleep, resting her head on one of the bags of clothes. The purple sleeve that crept forth from the top of the bag was held loosely in her hand.
Tone was typing at the world’s slowest pace on the computer, trying as hard as he could not to make any noise. Kohaku sat on the floor, thumbing through her phone in absentminded fashion while Bekko leaned against the fridge — upside-down, doing pushups in the same three-piece suit he always wore.
“Everything good?”
Race violently jolted, trying desperately to force her tired eyelids open as she looked around the room. “What time is it?”
“Eight thirty.” Tone grumbled, glaring at Ren in disgust. “We’re getting pizza in a few minutes. Ren.”
Ren abruptly stuffed the paint-smeared blanket he had tangled around his legs back inside his room after the time necessary for him to process Tone’s implication had passed. “Don’t you go back to work tomorrow?”
Race gave an extremely tired nod and collapsed her head back down on the bag, facing the opposite direction and suctioning the bag against her nose with each breath. Bekko ended his exercise with a roll that brought him back to his feet, brushing himself off and straightening his vest underneath his suitcoat.
“Where’s Rook?” Ren glanced about in search of the familiar silver mask. “He’s not on the roof again, is he?”
As if on queue, the heavy mechanical door suddenly sank an inch, rolling back into the white wall to reveal a low individual making a tremendous effort to stand on two legs instead of the six he was accustomed to. His trench coat possessed no pillow beneath it, and the old felt hat atop his armored scalp was mashed into its expected shape.
“Wait.” Odgu lifted one inhuman hand off the top of a thin, wooden cane, halting the collective effort the room made to lunge at him. “There’s no need for that. You’ve won.”
The silence that followed was eventually interpreted as an invitation to continue. “You have scattered the Pangolins to the wind. Koi Blood has turned on us. There is no one left for me to lead.” His protruding eyes seemed to lose their focus for a moment, and the cane threatened to slip out of the appendage that held it. “… So … I give up.”
“That’s not enough.” Ren’s eyebrows threatened to merge into a unibrow with how tightly they squeezed together. “You’ve killed a lot of people. That doesn’t get wiped way just because you gave up.”
“I know.”
Tone’s back straightened at the undertone in Odgu’s voice. “I was a fool for assuming I could control Hawk. Now he has murdered six people and injured countless more through his actions. I cannot absolve myself of so much blood.”
Ren could not help but glance at the cratered portion of wall which Tone had tactfully stood in front of. “You also have to answer for Fred. And Corey.”
“Yes, I kn-… What?” Odgu’s voice shifted from resigned melancholy to undisguised confusion. “Who’s Corey?”
The room grew just as puzzled in reply. Odgu’s head tipped back and forth, looking for some indicator from the Wild Masks that would help put a face to the name, until the purple sleeve extending from the bag of clothes caught his eye.
“You-” He stammered, locking eyes with Ren as the crimson orbs on either side of his head lost some of their presence. “You brought the BOY there?!”
“…If we didn’t-” Ren began, his eyes breaking away to follow the grooves in the floor, refocusing just in time to avoid the wooden cane thrown like a javelin at his head, its rubber bottom ricocheting off the wall.
“You-” Odgu snarled, all four of his available limbs tightening their inhuman hands into what most resembled a fist for several second before his shoulders slumped, his hands gently caressing their opposite. “No. It’s my responsibility. I have to make this right. Excuse me.”
“No you don’t.” Ren reached for his mask, but Odgu slammed one hand on the ground and fluttered his wings beneath his coat, letting out a peal which rang with an almost nostalgic note that sank into every surface in the apartment, dropping the inhabitants therein like flies. Standing up, he turned and exited down the hall, climbing through the open window at its end and flying out into the night sky.
The old haniwa watched.
—
“Bad hiding spot.”
Tone slid his hands out of his pockets and gestured to the city around him. “I get that it’s painted like Where’s Waldo, but it’s also three hundred and thirty three meters tall. Kinda hard to miss.”
Odgu turned his head during Tone’s quip with both the sharp precision and the overflowing joy of a conscious amputation. “You were awake.”
“A wise man once said that any one frequency can be canceled out with another.” Tone slid his hands back into his pockets. “And you’re limited to the sounds you can make with your wings. Our masks are always faster.”
He looked up at the stars. “Rook followed you over here and swapped for me when he landed. What was your plan, exactly? Jumping off and hoping the Tokyo tower is tall enough? Insects get pinned on cards, not pancaked.”
Odgu was silent for a moment, watching the wind pluck the trench coat off his back and send it fluttering to the city beneath him. As he began to slip over the edge, he gasped as Tone’s hand clamped itself around one of his wings to keep him from falling.
“You knock that off.” The Wild Mask growled, gripping the side of the tower for leverage as he forcefully pulled Odgu back to his feet. “Becoming paste doesn’t make up for anything.”
“You know nothing of redemption.” Odgu gingerly held the crumpled wing with two of his hands. “The blood of Pakka is on my hands, along with the two hundred killed by that beast. And now that boy of yours, he too is gone.” His glossy crimson eyes glowed into the slits of the metal mask. “Who else must I harm before my death can serve as redemption?”
Tone’s eyes remained locked on Odgu for a moment before he turned, slowly descending to sit on the edge of the tower’s smallest ring. “If death is redemption, then you have already been redeemed.”
Odgu’s eyes refused to break from Tone as he continued. “It took me a long time to realize that. My selfishly assuming some noble sacrifice on my part would smooth things over with the world lead me to justify every failure by one means or another.” He pulled the collar of his jacket tighter. “And then I killed a man twice.”
“It was cold the night he first died. He left a kid behind, and only then did I realize what I had done.” Tone’s head slowly turned to face Odgu, but caught itself before even half its journey had completed. “I orphaned a little boy because I felt like it. I did everything in my power afterwards to give him the greatest possible life he could ever have, but there was always the knowledge and guilt of what I’d done hanging over me. The fear that someday he’d find out.”
“Eventually his father reappeared and tried to kidnap him. I was faced with the very easy choice of letting him live, helping him return to the light, giving Corey that which I had taken from him that terrible day.”
“And I failed.” Tone swallowed, forcing down an accidental swell of emotion that escaped into his words. “And he died again.”
The silence afterwards brought the hissing of wind to the forefront as it whipped deftly around the tower. “Corey died a few days ago. He forgave me by name right before he passed. It’s taken me the better part of two years to learn redemption is paid by others, not by yourself. And in his death Corey chose to redeem not just me, but my image of myself.”
“I can’t offer you an end to the grief.” Tone finally met Odgu’s bulbous eyes with a light behind the cold steel he wore, his extended hand offering an extremely sad attempt at an origami mask. “But I can give you the one thing Corey left for us.”
“Redemption.”
Odgu slowly reached his inhuman hand to meet the paper mask, but paused as the world below him turned to blood. Both watchers atop the tower turned to face the fiery sea of light which poured across the city, with each and every sign and billboard losing their original messaging to make room for the alternating kanji and lettering which read, in both Japanese and English:
REN FUKUSHI IS
WILD MASKS
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