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Chapter Fourty
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 taking a moment to realize what Tone was addressing. “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 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 his 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 surrender.”
“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.”
“What?” Odgu’s voice shot from melancholy to 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 metal 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 sound 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 in the metal mask. “What else must I harm before my death can serve as redemption?”
Tone slowly descended, sitting on the edge of the tower’s smallest ring. “I’ve made a great many mistakes in my life. Killed people, thought I killed people. And then I killed someone twice.”
“He lost his father because of me. That first day he died was the coldest day in the universe. And when that wicked father of his came back from the dead,” Tone pulled the collar of his jacket tighter as the wind grew stronger. “I did not hesitate to kill him again. The first time, I failed; the second time… I chose.”
“Corey.” Odgu kept his eyes locked on Tone in spite of his new position. “The son of Know.”
“Both times he died I found myself facing the consequences of what I had done.” Tone leaned his forearms against his knees as the lights of Tokyo reflected off the dent in his mask. “I took Corey in, cared for him, spoiled him as much as I reasonably could. But that night… He must have used the mask. He must have learned about his father’s death.”
Odgu slowly descended, resting on four of his limbs as his gaze remained the same. “And yet he chose to forgive me before he died. Despite how much I may hate myself for what I did, there’s a cause greater than my guilt, a word stronger than my own. The reason Corey died is not nearly as strong as why he lived in the first place.”
“I don’t know much about redemption, it’s true.” Tone finally met Odgu’s bulbous eyes with a light behind the cold steel he wore. “But Corey seemed to believe in it. I do a disservice to his faith in it if I think myself beyond what he already accepted of me.”
“I can’t offer you an end to the grief.” He extended an extremely sad attempt at an origami mask. “Nor can I offer any kind of trust on behalf of the Wild Masks. But I can give you the only thing which, beyond painful memories and great regret, was the only thing Corey left for us.”
“Hope.”
Odgu slowly extended 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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