The Hunters' Compact — Chapter 4: Glass Hunt
Shibuya Annex, 09:13.
Rain webs the atrium glass. A security shutter sticks halfway like it changed its mind.
Rei ducks under without asking permission. Slate-gray coat. Paper case. Knife.
"Phones off," he says. "Eyes down."
A mall monitor blinks above the perfume counter:
GRADE B — MALL GATE ACTIVE. NO FILMING.
The corner strip keeps breathing red:
GRADE S — SHINAGAWA — ACTIVE.
We cross marble that wants to be a mirror. The mannequins stand like witnesses who won't swear.
A guard is slumped against a pillar, breathing fast. His phone points at nothing. On-screen: something tall stands exactly where we are not.
Rei steps on the phone with enough weight to turn the screen black. The guard's shoulders drop like a spell broke.
"Don't film," Rei says. Calm, bored by everything but the work. "Ever."
We move.
Mirrors everywhere. Columns wrapped in chrome. Watch faces making circles out of time.
In every reflection, a figure waits a half-step behind us, polite as a hand on the shoulder. If I turn, there's only rain and glass.
"Witness-type," Rei says. "Grade B in here. Grade A if you let it speak."
"What's its rule?"
"It likes being seen," he says. "It shows you where to kill it only when you refuse."
"How do you refuse in a mirror store?"
"Make it quiet," he says. "Then stop looking."
He pulls a red handle. Sprinklers open their small throats and the ceiling cries on cue. Water beads on chrome. Reflections smear into oil.
"Count," he says.
"Three."
"Good."
He doesn't tell me what to do. He never does. He turns his back on a floor-length mirror and raises the paper. The air eases like it's about to bow.
I lower my palm and lay a frost line straight across the marble. White Tape. Clean. Honest. Another line, parallel. We have a lane now.
My hands buzz. Aura low is a sound you feel.
We walk.
Mirrors offer us polite ghosts. The ghost keeps better posture than I do.
"Quiet," Rei says.
I breathe out into the circle my hands make even when they're empty. The world agrees for a second, then a second more. Sound thins in a neat bubble. Cold Gospel.
The mall hushes inside the bubble. Sprinklers fall mute, water still moving, noise arrested.
The ghost stops posing and leans. Its face turns. A bright seam shows under its jaw in the mirror nearest the escalator. In the real world, that seam would be six steps left of us, one step back, chest height.
"On my count," Rei says.
"Three," I say.
We keep our eyes down. Feet on white tape. No glances. No checks. If we look, it fattens. If we flinch, it steps into us through the glass.
"Two."
My arms feel like I carried a bag of wet concrete up too many stairs. The hush trembles at the edges. I hold it anyway. I can keep three beats. That's mine.
"One."
Rei stamps the permit into air without turning. "Stay."
The chrome column's reflection freezes like it agreed to be honest.
I don't swing. I put my heel through the base of the mirror six steps left, one step back, exactly where the seam would exist if the world were honest. The glass erupts in petal shards that don't sound yet because the quiet still owns them.
Rei threads the blade into empty space where a throat isn't. The sound catches up all at once and the Devil dies like a curtain dropping.
The hush breaks. Sprinklers hiss again. The mannequins look bored with us.
I go to hands on knees because my legs have ideas about quitting. Aura low. Body tired. Breath like gravel held in a tin.
Rei wipes the blade on the back of the permit and drops both in a trash can like paperwork. He steps to the guard and kicks the phone toward me with his toe.
"Pick that up," he says. "Bag it."
I slide it into a clear pouch without touching anything that sweats. The guard nods like a man who just remembered rent is due.
"Quiet for three," Rei tells him. "Get out by the service hall. No cameras."
The guard nods again. Doesn't say thanks. Good. Language is a trap here.
We walk the white tape lane out the way we came. Sprinklers keep crying. The mall goes back to pretending it's a place where money is the loudest thing.
At the perfume counter, a wall mirror holds too much light. For a blink, a school uniform moves through police tape in its surface. Rain on lashes.
Kelly.
I look up. The reflection goes back to being a bottle pyramid.
"Did you see—" I start.
"No," Rei says, because that's the rule if it keeps you alive. "Count your steps."
We count.
At the exit, a poster peels away from a column in a curl. A train schedule. First departure highlighted in marker: 07:41. A childish hand. A habit I know.
I put my palm on the marble one more time and lay a line to the threshold because sometimes drawing a line is the only magic we get.
Outside, the monitor flips:
GRADE B — CLEARED.
The red bar for Shinagawa keeps breathing like a thing with patience.
Rei watches the rain run off the atrium as if time owes him interest.
"Cold Gospel," he says, like naming a stray that decided to sit with us. "Keep it to three."
"I can do three," I say.
"Don't try for four," he says. "You'll give the city ideas."
We stand there until the mall decides to be loud again. Escalators groan awake. Music returns like it forgot its own words.
Rei starts walking. I keep up.
On the way down the steps, my foot slips. Not enough to fall. Enough to feel human.
"Phones off," he says again, more to the city than me.
I nod.
We pass a glass door. It gives me back a face I half-remember.
It isn't mine.
I look away, because that's how you refuse a Witness: you don't give it your eyes.
Tokyo inhales.
We go with it.