U/C Chapter 3 in progress

U/C: Chapter 3

By sammig82

In the year 1231, the King of the Mongolian Empire was devastated by the loss of his Queen. There was no one in his land that could replace the love of his life, a woman which he had known since he was still a boy. Adding to the pain was the circumstances of her death. The King had never seen anything like it before. He had asked the royal healer about it and was told that her evisceration could not be explained by science nor the knowledge of medicine.

There was neither blood nor bones. Witnesses among the servants and the King himself saw steam evaporating from her big brown eyes, ears and other open orifices before her demise. Her remains were deformed and deflated without any signs of her innards, as if she had just been skin like any of his hunt. What was left of his beautiful Queen was just her hair and her fair skin.

The King summoned every shamans and priests in search for answers, but it turned out that they were as shock as he had been. At last, the tormented ruler ordered the throne maker, who had been denying any intention to cause harm, to sit on the imperial chair himself. The middle-aged craftsman was about to meet his end as a punishment anyway, so the King thought that it would be fitting for him to die by his own creation.

Three days and there nights had passed and still, nothing befell the throne maker. The King was beginning to think that his queen’s death had nothing to do with the throne. It might be a curse practiced by his enemy, some black magic practiced by evildoers from abroad. Then his advisor suggested that he summoned the craftsman’s own daughter to sit on the cursed chair. That was when the King discovered its power. Suffering the same fate as the Queen, the craftsman’s daughter, who had just turned twenty one, transformed into another bundle of skin even before the sand in the hourglass had finished trickling.

While the King was furious and the craftsman was devastated that he had indeed created something sinister, the empire’s advisor had other inkling. As the craftsman awaited his death sentence, the King received a surprising visitor. The craftsman’s daughter, who he had seen with his own eyes turning into mere skins just like his Queen, stood before him. Wearing the same dress when she had been cursed by the chair, the young woman had somehow returned to the realm of the living to seek her revenge.

The King was about to call for his guards until he saw the unthinkable. The lovely young woman reached for the back of her neck before yanking her face forward as if it was just a mask. Indeed, it appeared to be a miraculous disguise as the head of his advisor was revealed. He then went on a lengthy explanation of the magical ability of the cursed throne. With his empire under siege from all sides, the wise ruler saw an opportunity.

“Halt the execution at once. Bring him to me immediately. The throne maker shall be reunited with his daughter…” the King said as his eyes glued to the disguised advisor.

While many had thought that the craftsman had been quietly executed, the King and his advisor, who had been wearing the skin of the craftsman’s daughter, saw to it that the usage of the cursed chair and its subsequent replication was to be kept a secret. Hidden in a dungeon under the King’s castle, the craftsman continued to make more of the cursed chairs under the persuasion of someone who he thought was his daughter – until his very last breath.

The Chief Inspector

Chief Inspector Otani Shin was pretty much a hands-on type of detective. Despite the scope of his job, he would rather be on the field picking his brain than sitting behind the comfort of his desk delegating. After all, his rise to the top of the Tokyo Metropolitan’s homicide echelon was based purely on merit alone, and not due to some shady internal connections. He still held the record of solving the highest percentage of cases in the prefecture.

Nicknamed ‘The Closer’, he had been well known for his attention to detail especially when it comes to the scene of a murder. To him, this was undoubtedly a murder, despite all signs pointing towards a suicide. Kubo Yoshiro’s apartment was a total mess, though, not the kind of 27-year-old bachelorette kind of mess. The place had basically been ransacked. Somebody took the trouble to even produce a suicide note and made the whole thing looked like a suicide when the place was literally turned upside down. The half-hearted attempt to hide that fact, though, could not fool Otani.

Drawers were taken out and emptied before being slid back into the shelves. Laptops were taken, while hard drives were missing from the opened cases of the computer towers. The perpetrators, Otani suspected, were obviously trying to get rid of some evidence. Despite their efforts to shift the public eyes to nothing more than a simple case of a lonely young man taking his own life due to a recent rejection by a female interest, Otani was smelling the stench of a murder.

With Kubo’s body being cleared from the crime scene and sent to the morgue for post-mortem, Otani’s forensic members were busy dusting the place for finger prints. Similar to the computers, Kubo’s CCTV set up had been tampered with. Otani’s only bet now was for the IT team to recover whatever they could.

Otani was still in the apartment’s surveillance room playing back recordings from the building’s entrance and the lobby. A group of about four burly men with similar tattoos on their body stepped into the elevator not long before Kubo’s death. The involvement of the Yakuza had not been surprising to Otani considering the way Kubo’s place had been roughened up. The more important question though, why Kubo-kun? He was merely a member of the law enforcement who had never been on the field.. What kind of stuff had Kubo-kun caught which had apparently resulted in his tragic end?

“Sir, the camera on the victim’s floor had not been working for the past couple of days. It appeared to have been vandalized,” one of Otani’s subordinates reported.

“Well, that’s a shame. I’d have love to know what our young colleague was doing at Kubo-kun’s apartment right before the camera was taken out,” Otani said while staring at the footage of Hikaru Miki standing at the lobby waiting for an elevator.

The Instructor

Hikaru Miki sneezed gently into the inside of her elbow before quietly cursing at the person who mentioned her name somewhere in an unknown location. It was a crude habit she had carried over from the personality of a 51-year-old Yakuza named Yamasaki Makoto. Fortunately for her muscle memory, the currently 26-year-old was abled to somewhat mask her uncultured mien.

“Hikaru-sensei, did you just say something?” Ito Ayaka, one of the fifty academy prospects asked.

“Nothing important,” Miki said as she stood in front of the sizeable class.

Dressed smartly in an executive suit with buttoned white blouse, tucked neatly into a restrictive mid-thigh pencil skirt completed with a matching blazer, Miki looked good without her regular shirt and jeans getup. As a stand-in instructor, she was tasked to teach the subject “Drugs and Violence Handling in The Community.”

This was also an opportunity for her to build a good rapport with these young ladies as she scanned through everyone in the auditorium. At first glance, she knew right away why they were ‘handpicked’ by Yui-sama. After all, the chief insisted on interviewing each and everyone of the prospects despite her busy schedule. Apart from being chosen for their family connections and background, they were all very physically… ‘fit’. Yui-sama or rather, Orochi-sama had been rather generous to the fifty or so men currently memorizing the particulars of their assigned replacement targets.

Resisting to lick her lipstick-coated lips, Miki was in love with the tone of her own voice as she instructed a few of the young women to do a brief self-introduction.

“Let’s start with you at the front,” Miki pointed to the petite but well-proportioned girl who had nearly caught her cursing earlier.

“My name’s Ito Ayaka, from Mimaru. I’m a 21-year-old who was studying law until I saw the adverts for the women’s police recruitment. I literally jumped at the opportunity,” Ayaka announced while standing at attention.

Miki eyed her from head to toe and concluded that she was the ‘Kawaii’ type where she could easily fit into any one of those idol groups. With both her parents prominent members in the current ruling party, Miki could see the immense potential of having her siding with the Yakuza despite not being the most physically-adapted for on the ground police works. After hearing her motivation for quitting law school to join the academy, the former Yakuza moved on to the next girl.

“What about you at the back?”

This one was significantly taller. At 5-foot-10, her slender figure and angular face with high cheek bones gave out modelling vibes as her silky long hair was tied up into a pony-tail. Like the rest of the class, she was dressed in a white academy tee and long green khakis. But, she somehow made them looked trendier than they ought to be thanks to her ideal physical proportions.

“My name is Furuya Kasumi. Currently 20 years old from Shinjuku. I was told that I would have a promising future in modelling. But my true calling has always been in law enforcement,” she said.

Miki could see why. After all, she came from a family of police officers. Her father was the current Commissioner of the Chiba prefecture, while both her elder brothers ranked Superintendents in each of their wards in the city. With such a strong influence in the National Police Agency, Kasumi didn’t seem to have much choice but to follow the steps of the famous Furuya’s. Miki quietly congratulated Orochi-sama for another important recruitment before moving on. The curvaceous young lady seated on the third row in the middle stood out for her as she pointed her out to introduce herself.

“I’m Kamei Tomiko from Hachioji. Recently celebrated my 23rd birthday,” she said.

“So Tomiko-san, do you mind sharing with us why you decided to join the police?” Miki asked from the lectern.

After giving it some thought, the well-endowed student announced, “Well, there isn’t a specific reason to be honest. I just thought that I’d look good in the uniform.”

That prompted giggles from almost everyone in the class, Miki included. Along with her short-cropped hairstyle and a lovely visage, Tomiko without a doubt had the most impressive bust among the girls. It was not difficult for Miki to forgive her for her playful response, especially when she was from a family of a powerful conglomerate.

“How about you next to Tomiko-san? Do you also share the same sentiment regarding our attire as lady officers?” Miki directed the question to a slender bespectacled girl seated next to the outgoing heiress.

“…” the girl was blushing from the sudden attention from everyone.

Miki could immediately tell that she was the complete opposite of Tomiko. “Let’s start with telling us a little bit about yourself.”

“I… I’m Tsu… Tsukamoto Mi… Miwa… I’m from… Shibuya. My… my family runs a book… bookstore,” Miwa said.

“Oh right. Isn’t that the famous bookstore right next to Shibuya Crossing?” One of the girls behind her asked to which Miwa nodded.

Miki had little interest to the sort of business her family was running. Rather, she was attracted to her introverted appearance. In spite of that, the former Goto could tell that behind her thick-rimmed glasses, Miwa was as attractive as anyone else in the class. Her hair was painstakingly double-braided, while her figure though not as curvy as Tomiko’s, would still looked good in any skin-tight dresses if she’d decide to shed her conservative front.

“Hmm… what about you next to Kasumi-san? You look kinda familiar?” Miki pointed to the photogenic girl before she obligingly stood at attention.

21-year-old Akiyama Haruko began to introduce herself before explaining that she might seemed familiar because she had once been a TV host for a popular children’s programme a couple of years ago. Her sister was also a successful actress currently under long term contract with Grand Entertainment Production, a major rival of Aikawa Corp as well as the company which was owned by Sugita Hiromi’s family. However, she was humbled to be given the opportunity to be part of the law enforcement agency and begged that fellow trainees see her just like anyone else in the classroom, not as a celebrity.

“Well said,” the former Goto applauded while recalling that this was the girl whose father was murdered by one of his men many years ago. Her father was a bystander when a Yakuza war broke out, and had unfortunately became a collateral casualty due to a case of mistaken identity.

... more to come...