Untouchable (Part 2)

A Chapter by AlexTheCrow

Part 2 of the first part of Crimson, Untouchable

Untouchable (Part 2)

"Don't move."

The voice was a female's, and took on an intimidating tone. Was I being robbed? Couldn't be, since whoever it was could have just stolen my things while I was asleep. So what could this person be after? Interesting. I did as I was told and remained still.

"Stand. Slowly."

In reality, I could have just spun around and disarmed the person, but I decided to just play along to see what her motivations were. I didn't recognize the voice, but I'd already taken an extremely wild guess as to who the person was. As I got up, the sharp object against my neck was slowly lifted as well, but did not break contact. The person moved my chair aside as I stood up.

"Hands up, and turn around. Slowly."

I obeyed once more. As I turned around, the object touching my neck remained stationary, and was pointed at my throat after I had fully turned. My raised arm had passed straight through the person's limb. My guess was correct. Before me was none other than Tsubaki Nagano, the girl I had passed through earlier today. I wanted to say something, but I decided to remain silent. The stance she took while pointing her Swiss army knife at me was impressively delicate and precise. She seemed to have some background in fencing.

"Hayashi Shimura." she said in a sullen tone. "I have a request, or rather, an order for you."

I remained completely still. The tip of her knife was still against my throat. I was not afraid, but more curious as to what she was after.

"And for the sake of your life, you will adhere to it." Her face was completely void of emotion, and the only thing that seemed to be moving was her mouth.

I nodded slowly.

"Assuming you haven't already realized, my body is incorporeal." she continued. "However, this is only the case for humans. I am able to touch other objects normally, like this knife, for instance."

Strange. In all my years as an anomalist, I'd never dealt with something like this before.

"Your order from me," she narrowed her eyes and increased the pressure of her knife on my throat. "is to keep what happened this morning a secret, and never tell anybody. If you fail to comply with this, I will kill you."

Despite how threatening she appeared, I knew very well that she would not be able to live up to her words.

"If it makes you feel any better, I will tell you why my body is like this. I encountered a demon a long time ago, and it cast a spell on me."

Huh. Demons don't normally use magic that isn't of destructive nature. Her description was probably inaccurate.

"So, from this moment forth, you will not speak a single word about me, and if I find out anybody else who knows about what happened this morning, I will kill both you and that person." She glared menacingly at me.

This had gone on for long enough. I had already found out what she was after, so I had no reason to remain silent anymore.

"Do you think," I tilted my head slowly to side. "I am afraid of you?" My hair moved just enough for her to get a glimpse of my left eye.

She did a good job of hiding it, but I could see a hint of shock and fear in her eyes. I seized the moment and grabbed the blade of her knife, yanking it out of her hands and cutting my palm in the process. I dropped the knife on the floor next to me. It was covered with my blood, which was still oozing out of the wound it had sliced in the middle of my palm. She stood there dumbfounded, probably not knowing what she should do next.

"I have no intention of taking any orders from you." I said sternly. "But I will tell you this." I raised my injured palm. The wound was already rapidly closing thanks to my vampiric regeneration. "I can help you with your problem. I can find a way for you to return to normal. If you're interested, you may find me again, but I urge you to do so in a civilized manner." I wiped the blood off my palm with my other hand, showing my now fully healed palm.

I grabbed my things and exited the classroom. She continued standing idly behind my table, looking both surprised and in awe.

...

I made my way towards the school's main gate where my bike was parked, like I usually did every day after school was over.

"Hayashi? Oh my goodness, are you alright?" Aria ran up to me from behind. "Your hands, they're..."

Shoot. I forgot to go wash the blood off my hands. That tends to happen a lot, since after my wounds healed I would completely forget about everything because the pain had gone away, and just leave the blood there. I stopped walking and turned to face Aria.

"..they're bleeding! What happened? Did you get into a fight? Weren't you sleeping in class?" she rattled off a bunch of questions in rapid succession, sounding extremely worried.

"I'm fine, I'm alright," I chuckled. "You of all people should know that." That was true. Aria was one of the few people who knew about my vampiric curse, and she'd seen me recover from way worse injuries before, but she always overly concerned herself with my well-being, which I found to be slightly amusing at times. I showed her my palms. They were perfectly fine.

"Oh, thank goodness. What happened to you?" she continued questioning me anyways.

After what had just happened in the classroom, I decided that it would probably be best to keep it between me and Tsubaki, so I came up with a lie.

"I was... playing with a penknife when I woke up. Because I was bored."

Crap. That wasn't very convincing, was it? Do I even have a penknife in my pencil case?

"What? Why would you do such a thing? You're so silly sometimes, you know that?"

Wow. She believed me.

"Just because you can regenerate doesn't mean you can go around doing dangerous things like that! What if one day you lose your powers? What if one day your body can't regenerate anymore and you die?" She began lecturing me.

"Sorry, sorry!" I apologized. "It won't happen again, I promise!"

As caring and innocent as she was, she was also very easy to deceive, which was probably a side effect of those two qualities.

"So... what are you still doing here? Class ended quite some time ago." I said, trying really hard to find a way to change the subject.

"You know I stay back every day for night study, what are you talking about?" She giggled.

I smiled stupidly, impressed at how bad I was at conversation and how fast her mood changed.

"Anyway, I'm going to head home, we have a lot of homework today, don't we?"

Needless to say, I actually didn't have any idea what homework there was for today.

"Mm!" She nodded. "That's true, you'd better go home quickly and get it done! Bye-bye!" She waved and ran off.

I waited for her to round the corner before letting out a sigh. I enjoyed her company and all, but sometimes I felt she worried about me way too much for her own good.

...

As I neared the main gate, I saw a person leaning against one of the walls near to the bicycle lots. She most likely decided to take my offer. I approached her neutrally, trying not to seem too hostile or friendly.

"I accept your offer." Tsubaki said, eyeing me sternly. "However, if I begin having doubts about your true intentions, I will take action."

"That's perfectly fine." I replied confidently. I had no thoughts of betraying her in any way, to me this was just another job.

"Explain to me. How are you going to return me to normal?"

I told her about how I was an anomalist, and that if a demon was what caused her problem it was a job that probably only an anomalist could take on. But in all honesty, I didn't really have any ideas as to what I should do or where to start.

"Very well." She seemed convinced enough. "What do we do now?"

I got on my bicycle. "Hop on, we're going to go find somebody."

She sat on the back seat. "Who?"

"Somebody who can tell us what we need to do."

Toshi Sokuhara. My mentor as an anomalist. Loves money. Loves sleeping. Taught me swordplay.

Back during the time when him and I were journeying together, we made a very good team. At that time, my strength far surpassed his thanks to my curse, so I was the "brawn" of the team, so to speak. I could easily cut down any monster and was extremely resistant to injuries. Toshi on the other hand, was the "brains" of the team. Although I did have basic and fundamental knowledge of monsters in general, Toshi has always been very good at identifying exactly what kind of monster a problem is caused by, and the best way to deal with it. He was also good at formulating strategies to fight against more intelligent monsters and finding ways to exploit weaknesses of very powerful ones.

He's past his prime now, but thankfully his knowledge and intuition from his experience still lingers. I figured that if there was someone who could help me find out what to do to fix Tsubaki's problem, he was probably the only person.

To be continued.

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