I love books; I love them more than life itself.

As you turn the pages, the sweet smell of ink floats into the air. The techniques of printing, ever improving through trial and error, truly comprise an art form. The pure white page is the stage, across which characters beautifully dance. In the weaving of those elements, lies innumerable tales.

Wisdom, ambition, sadness, joy, malice, grief, amazement - all the emotions which blaze within the human soul may be recorded on a page.

Nestled in a sheaf of paper sleeps an infinity beyond the limits of the universe. Just by opening a single page, we may fly into that infinity.

A happiness which enfolds the heart may bring us to tears. In our intoxication, we abandon our physical reality, unable to tear our eyes from the page.

By this alone may I divorce myself from this world, and set myself adrift in that of paper and ink...

I love books. I truly do.

"There's something I don't like about this building," spat Woo as he exited the car. His frame, wrapped in a J. Phillips suit, was small, but the suit stretched over him as if it were made of taut rubber. From the breast-pocket of his jacket peeked the head of a snake, to the surprise of any onlookers. Upon closer inspection, however, it would become clear that the snake was, in fact, a clever imitation.

Lu could tell that his brother was in a bad mood.

"Fuuuu..." Lu's only response was an extended sigh.

Every part of him, from his hands and fingers to his face and neck, was as wide and large as his sigh was long. While he was wearing a suit which matched Woo's in general appearance, the size of his suit was far greater than any other had to be. The two were like an "odd couple" from an old comedy movie, and Woo knew from Lu's sigh, that he, too, found the building suspicious.

"It feels like a tomb. Not that it means a damn thing."

And, indeed, in the midst of the deep darkness, the building shone as if aflame with infernal whiteness. The moon was the most logical cause, but that didn't stop the scene from bearing a striking resemblance to a giant's grave.

Lu directed his gaze to the perimeter. It would have been clearer by daylight, but he thought this seemed to match the target area's description.

This wasn't the countryside; there actually were a number of unlit buildings lined up here. It's was just that there were no people around. That, if anything, made this feel like a graveyard.

Odaiba, Tokyo.

Thanks to errors on the part of the C.A.U.C.D.P (Coastal Auxiliary Urban Center Development Program), this area had become a ghost town. While some people still came during daylight, at night, not even the shadowed form of a stray dog could be spotted here.

To those hailing from Hong Kong, the "Nightless Palace," this darkness seemed like some kind of joke.

Why had this place become abandoned? Lu couldn't quite come to terms with this, but tried to focus on the task at hand.

"Sir, are our trading partners Japanese?"

Woo just muttered a confirmation in an "it doesn't really matter" way. The Japanese are known as the world's greatest purchasers of useless things.

"Let's just get this done quick and go home."

“Gah-”

Lu grabbed a mysteriously bulging attaché case from the back seat.

Woo turned to face the building, which appeared to be over forty stories tall.

About 30 stories up, a single lit floor wrapped the building in a band of brightness and apart from that one floor, the rest of the area remained unlit.

"Shit!"

Woo's foul temper shot up another notch.

In the midst of the darkness, the neon lighting seemed fitting. No one would ever know what had occurred in the silence once you'd been and gone from there.

".........."

They scanned the area for the presence of friends or foes, but found nothing.

Though his fears weren't quite alleviated, Woo began to head toward the building. Lu picked up the case and followed him.

A survey of the interior revealed that it matched the dead appearance of the exterior. No signs of human presence could be noted. After its construction, no tenants had arrived, leaving it to nothing but decay. This was a building left to rot. In its fate, could be seen the fate of this town.

However, as soon as Woo stepped inside, he could feel that something was different in here.

"... Clear."

At that single word, Lu released the safety on his gun strapped to his side.

The deal was to go down to the 34th floor. When Woo stepped into the elevator, he tried the buttons for the floors immediately above and below, but there was no response. It was probably just out of order, but, something felt wrong about it.

Thump, thump, thump - their footsteps struck the flooring with an uninspiring, muffled sound.

It didn’t look like any funds had been put into the upkeep of this area. It’s likely that no tenants ever tread these floors.

“34” finally appeared on the elevator’s floor display.

“Let’s roll.”

With a slight look of concern, Lu nodded in response. The door silently opened.

“..................”

Beyond the door, the 34th floor lay before them. As Woo considered the myriad of doors and corridors, he found himself, quite unexpectedly, to be a bit exhausted by the prospect.

This floor had quite a sprawling layout. It looked as if it had once been an office, with desks still positioned around the area. All manner of books, binders, memo pads, magazines, and other paper waste were scattered about.

Woo and Lu swept their gaze across the scene before them. It did not seem to conceal any human presence.

The pair’s gaze soon joined at the center of the space. There stood a rather large, round table of the sort that might be used for holding meetings. It wasn’t anything particularly out of place. It merely appeared to have been moved from the company’s meeting room.

Behind this table stood a pair of people.

"Welcome! We've been waiting for you!"

This was said in an elevated tenor by a blond man in a dark blue suit who stood with his arms held wide. At first glance he appeared to be young, but as his eyes were concealed by sunglasses, it was impossible to be certain.

The person standing beside him was a woman.

Her skin and long, black hair appeared typically Asian. Her eyes were also hidden behind sunglasses, but from her nose, her lips, and the blush of her cheeks, it was possible to place her age at 20 or so. She wore an unfashionable coat that somewhat resembled a lab coat. Beneath that, could be barely glimpsed: a shirt, a tie, and a skirt that fell below the knee. Sexiness, fashion sense, trendiness: she clearly couldn’t even begin to consider these things.

“....................”

The woman nervously opened and closed her mouth. The blond had probably taught her some words of greeting to use, and she was clearly trying to say them, but nothing was successfully getting past her lips. Clearly, she was quite nervous.

Woo and Lu stepped wordlessly onto the 34th floor. The flooring gave off the same weak sound as that in the elevator.

As they approached the table, their gaze swept across their surroundings. They swore there had to be others hiding in the shadows behind the pillars, but they didn’t spot anyone. It seems that as far as the eye could see, they were alone on the floor.

As they walked toward the table, a smile flashed across the blond’s face.

Woo relaxed slightly when he spotted the suitcase next to the blond.

The woman, clearly unable to relax, openly swept her gaze between Woo’s face and the case that Lu carried. Her neck swung back and forth in time with her oscillating gaze, giving her the appearance of a clockwork doll.

Woo was now quite confident. But, why would such an unguarded person be here?

Before long, the two groups faced each other across the barrier of the table.

“I deeply apologize for the long journey required to join us here, Master Woo.”

“I don’t really like being called ‘Master’ by people I’ve just met.”

Woo rejected the tone with which the blond had begun.

“That's rude.”

But the blond paid him no heed.

Woo’s gaze moved across to the woman.

“What’s with her?”

She tightened up at the question. “I’m staff... This may seem rude, but I’m here as an appraiser.”

“An appraiser?”

“Yes. How can I explain it, I’m a neutral party to both sides. Saying this might make you uncomfortable, but if someone were to be taken in by a forgery, it’d be a real problem.”

Woo raised his left eyebrow an inch.

“What? You don’t trust us?”

“Ah, it’s not that...”

The blond had smoothly interjected.

All of a sudden, the conversation had begun to throw off its initial pretense.

“................”

Woo’s near-audible gaze swept over the woman.

“... E-excuse me~”.

As it lingered on her agitated face, an awkwardly polite laugh floated in the air. It was a laugh that was a hair away from breaking out of its formality.

“Well, that’s ok. It’s not like we’re gonna be friends or anything.”

Woo completely ignored the woman’s nervous laughter. After all, it clearly wasn’t just this situation that this hapless woman didn’t understand. Whichever way the job went, you had to stay aloof. Once you grasped that, you could proceed in talks much more easily.

While the laugh still floated in the air, Woo turned to face the woman.

“Open that coat; show us what’s underneath.”

“!”

The woman’s laugh died out, and she began to blush fiercely.

“What’s the matter? Hurry up and do it.”

Her voice trembling as if she were about to cry, the woman responded.

“......... That’s sick.”

The temperature in the room rose precipitously.

“The hell did you just say?!”

He hadn’t had a woman call him ‘sick’ in decades. In response, Woo had gotten a bit distracted, quite uncharacteristically, from the deal at hand.

“Anyway... I said, show us.”

Chuckling, the blond man explained the situation to the woman.

“This is all just a misunderstanding. He’d just like to verify you aren’t hiding any weapons under there.”

Sweat pouring off her, she violently inhaled.

“I... I was just surprised. I’m sorry. Really, I am...”

“That’s fine; now get the front of that open!”

Woo was nearly shouting at this point.

“Y-yes!”

Shocked into action, she flung the front of her coat open.

“?!”

Woo and Lu’s gaze traced over every curve of her unexpectedly impressive figure as they made their inspection.

But that wasn’t what surprised them most.

Inside the coat, they didn’t spot anything that looked much like a weapon. However, the lining was riddled with randomly placed pockets, each one stuffed with novels, rolled-up magazines, newspapers, and so forth.

“....What the hell is this?”

In response to Woo's perfectly reasonable question, the woman beamed out with expression and voice alike.

“Books!”

“I can see that! But why’d you bring all those?!”

“Well, when riding the train, wouldn’t it be a problem if there wasn’t anything to read?!”

Woo wasn’t quite able to believe that she could have been so put out over a thing like that.

“One newspaper’s good enough!”

“Just that?! That wouldn’t last a minute! And that’s supposed to satisfy people?!”

She whipped out a novel and thrust it towards him.

“Look, in this, ‘The Love Song from above the Sky’, the last scene can really make you cry. The one where the lovers from rival houses sing that ballad...”

Woo paid no heed to her chattering, instead fixating on her beauty.

“What is she, really?”

“An appraiser.”

The blond’s smiling response was the last straw. This whole situation just wasn’t right, and overall, he just didn’t get what was going on here.

“...... Ok, that’s it.”

At Woo’s outburst, the blond held up his hand to signal the woman to stop. She pursed her lips and reluctantly put the book away.

“Well, let’s keep this moving along, shall we? Could you please show us the item in question?”

Woo glanced at Lu. The latter nodded and lifted an attaché case onto the table.

“.... Open it.”

Lu began to clear the case’s three-stage locking mechanism, which involved a card-key, a dial, and a fingerprint scan.

With a whoosh and a muffled thump, the case opened.

“.... Show ‘em.”

At Woo’s command, Lu flipped the case around so that the blond and his companion could see its contents.

The case was of Australian military manufacture. It was rumored that any attacks against it would be absorbed by two kinds of damage-negating materials.

Woo opened up with a few boasts.

“The case always stays at 15 degrees Celsius. The dehumidification and ventilation systems are perfect. Its water and assault resistance are clearly both military grade. Even if I were to really put my mind to it, it’d take me a lifetime to bust through that. I’d bet my mother’s ass on it.”

“That was a beautiful expression.”

Within its indulgently protective environment, the main star of the evening was enshrined.

“Here’s the item you wanted.”

Like the crown jewels, this was something to be handled gently and with the greatest respect.

It was a book. Bound in black leather, it appeared quite ancient. On the cover, the book’s title was stitched with gold thread.

“‘The Black Collection of Maxims for Youth’. It is said that in the year 1643, Angelica Laston wrote this book for use by her sponsor’s family. The ‘Maxims for Youth’ are there only in name, as the contents and illustrations are an unabashed escape into eroticism and evil combined. As this was a most secret book, only one authenticated copy was known to exist. Fanatics of the ‘Youth Maxim’ genre worldwide are dying to own this, and would drool over the mere opportunity to hold this Holy Grail.”

“Yes, yes, yes....”

The blond nodded his head endlessly throughout Woo’s explanation.

“But, where did you find it? I had heard that its whereabouts had been unknown for quite some time.”

“Seven days ago, Renaldo Tucker in Utah died, catch my drift?”

“I did hear that, but--”

“This was found in his 8th book storehouse. For the past twenty years, it didn’t show up in any private or public showings, so odds are - he was keeping it hidden.”

In seeming agreement, the blond responded.

“Tucker’s shelves were called a 'sea of books', yes? Having heard that, it certainly seems plausible.”

“His relatives are gonna take over his used book operation soon. There’s talk of it ending up as more of a storehouse than an actual shop.”

“That’s only to be expected, for such a collection has never been assembled outside Heaven, eh?”

As Woo and the blond exchanged comments, Lu’s expression began to grow rather dubious.

The one that Lu was watching was the woman next to the blond.

She didn’t seem to hear any of the conversation: she was staring rapturously at the book. Even through the sunglasses, the intensity of her gaze was clear.

“Aaah....”

The woman’s mouth had opened, and a few noises slipped out.

“... Could ya take a look at this?”

Since the first moan had escaped the woman, Woo had been aware of her condition. However, as she was supposed to be acting as the appraiser, he didn't have a reason to deny that request.

“That’d be fine, right? Hey--”

Midway through his speech, he turned to face his companion.

Lu had put on a pair of white gloves, and now he reverently lifted a book from the case.

With skill and respect, he angled the book toward the woman and held it toward her. Like a kid who’d been presented with his Christmas gift, she greedily grabbed for the thing.

“!”

However, a confused Lu pulled the book back out of her reach.

“Huh?! .... What did you do that for?!”

The woman was shocked and spoke out angrily. Her voice conveyed a mixture of surprise and outright rage. However, Lu remained unflinchingly in place.

“Gah!”

With his white-gloved hand, Lu pointed at her mouth.

“Huh?”

A single bead of fluid trickled down.

“Aaaah!”

Unable to bear it any longer, Woo had to shout.

This was a case of drool beyond human comprehension. By virtue of its unbelievable viscosity, the leading drip hung past the woman’s chest.

“Eh...? Oh, aaaah!”

The woman’s face blushed a bright red, and she vigorously wrung her hands. With that movement, the drool vanished toward the tabletop. Across the table, neither Woo nor Lu spotted it, but...

“I-I’m so sorry!”

The woman deeply inclined her head. Next to her, the blond laughed painfully.

“You gotta be kidding me. You dirty it and we’ll be taking the full price for it.”

“No, no, please allow me to apologize. It’s that she’s a die hard bibliomaniac. If a rare book is placed before her, she gets a bit over-excited, you could say.”

The woman’s eyes were downcast, and her cheeks still bore a full blush.

“Watch out, then...”

Furrowing his brow, Lu presented the book a second time. At that movement, the woman suddenly jerked her head back up.

She seemingly hadn’t learned much from the last incident.

Lu handed her the book, and she released a faint sigh. Lu yanked his arms back in fear, as if from some sort of looming horror.

Ever so slowly, the woman drew the book up to her chest.

“That’s pretty bold of you. You’ll get the damn thing dirty!”

She was handling it without gloves, so as to better examine the paper quality of the book. Woo knew this, but was still uncomfortable.

The woman inclined her head toward the blond.

“...May I?”

“Please hold it in.”

“... C’mon. If I don’t take a closer look, I won’t have full faith in my analysis.”

The blond was silent for a moment, and then:

“I suppose there’s no way around it. ... Well, you can go ahead.”

The granting of permission sunk into the woman. She eagerly knelt down on the floor.

"Hey, what in the...?"

Before Woo could finish his question, the woman had removed her sunglasses. Unlike what one would have expected to see once her face was exposed, beneath the sunglasses she had been wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses. This struck both Woo and Lu as something of an anti-climax.

Her misshapen glasses only served to exacerbate her unfashionable appearance.

However, through the lenses her large eyes shone with a light that threatened to overwhelm the two men.

To the clearly-intent woman, the blond man raised his voice.

“Mind you, this is just to inspect it. Now’s not the time for in-depth reading.”

With a white fingertip, the woman traced along the edge of the book, gently, as if caressing it. She's just doing that to check the quality, thought Woo.

She flipped over the book and repeated the process of tracing along the cover. What could be the purpose of that?

As he watched her, Lu began to grow fixated on the woman.

With a few faint, eager breaths, the woman opened the book. All of a sudden the book flipped open to its center, and the one who had opened it was forced to avert her eyes.

“Ahhahahahahaha..........”

Her cheeks blushed bright red, and tears floated in her eyes. She had the look of a girl who had just received a confession of love. Clearly, something had excited her deep within her self. This seemingly unfashionable and less than charming woman had given the room a tinge of sexuality.

Her appeal was that of a high-class courtesan, multiplied by a thousand-fold. A single moan escaped her throat. In reponse, Lu forced himself to lock his jaw in place and swallow hard.

Suddenly, the woman dropped her head onto the book with a ‘wumph’.

“Oy!”

Woo had to say something after that unexpected action.

The blond thrust his arms forward as he tried to keep the situation in check.

“Don’t worry yourself. She’s not going to rub her face against it or anything of that nature; this is merely to test the scent.”

“The scent?”

“The scent of the paper - that too may indicate the quality of the materials from which the book is made.”

“I do know that much, but...”

“It’s that understanding that she is trying to reach.”

The blond sharply cut off Woo’s statement.

“Through proof gleaned by scientific techniques and historical evidence, writing style, and the content of the piece, we may draw conclusions about an item’s legitimacy. Typically those three methods are enough to show us whether a book is genuine or not, but occasionally, there comes a person who has developed some other, unique method.”

While the blond strung together his explanation, the woman sniffed at the book.

“The emotion the author infused into the book, the immense time spent in its creation, the level of skill involved; these things are not possible to counterfeit. A person such as I have described, one such as she, may “read” those things beneath the surface of the paper. And even more rarely, such a person may so strongly understand the feelings within books that for him, or for her, books become a weapon. .... She is also of that sort.”

“....Hmm....”

There may as well have not been an answer, as the woman began to produce small noises from within the cracked-open book. It was clear that she was in ecstasy.

Woo was starting to feel some undefinable unease with the deal at hand. From the moment he first saw the building, the impression of wrongness had been there. This feeling caused something poisonous and serpentine to stir within him.

In his normal dealings, he’d met with appraisers on a regular basis; however, he’d never encountered one who used “scent” to determine the veracity of an item.

The woman looked up at him.

Her eyes were cloudy with tears of joy, and her face had flushed to a rosy hue.

“Well, what do you think?”

“It’s...the real thing...”

The woman answered as if she were intoxicated. Her words buried themselves into Woo’s breast, biting ever deeper into him. Of course it was the real thing. It’d taken $1,000,000 to acquire this book.

“Splendid. I would expect no less of Mr. Woo, the “Reader’s Snake” - Not that I didn’t trust you, of course.”

“No worries. So long as we get our cash, it’ll all be just fine.”

He brushed the blond’s words aside. At any rate, the deal's completion lay right around the corner. At that thought, his expression lightened.

“However, in all the world, there can’t be another like her.”

“Is that so?”

The one who answered wasn’t the woman, but instead, the blond. The woman still clutched the book to her chest as she stared dazedly off into space.

As it were, she was acting like the book were a present to her self.

“’Cause the kind of person who’d be a collector is damn near always male.”

“If that’s what’s said, it must be true.”

“Women just get turned off easily. They don’t have the drive or whatever, to get a ton of something -- especially when it’s something as friggin’ useless as books.”

At that last statement, the woman started a little. From the imaginary pleasure garden in which it had been meandering, her gaze snapped immediately to Woo.

“That was quite an unexpected thing to say. Does Mr. Woo find books to be useless??”

Woo struck back violently at the blond’s words.

“Books - the damn things take up space, they’re heavy, and they’re just a waste of paper which doesn’t serve any real purpose whatsoever.”

“Alright. However, don’t you at least read with some measure of frequency?”

Woo let loose an ironic laugh.

“I don't read ‘em and I don’t write ‘em. They’re just merchandise. It’s just that they only really make money this way, ya know. My father and grandfather, they did the same.”

“I see...”

Across from the barely responsive blond, the woman’s aspect had changed.

“...You!”

Woo could hear the rage in the woman’s voice.

“What could you possibly be talking about?! Books are the world’s treasures, within which are found the distillation of all the knowledge of mankind!”

Woo’s eyes bulged at the woman’s vehemence. The last time he’d heard a woman raise her voice in anger was when his female schoolteachers had scolded him. Next to him, Lu’s face grew angry out of a sense of brotherhood with his comrade.

“For decades, for centuries, since antiquity, people from the underworld have thought of paper as something to pass along, to use to communicate, and then, to destroy! Sometimes through intelligence, sometimes through devotion, meaningful thoughts have been drawn from a universe of possibilities! With the depth of feeling that is imparted by such a thing as a book, you call it trash?! You had best take that back!”

Her angry words built up to a crescendo. However, the expression that drifted across Woo’s face wasn’t of anger, so much as overwhelming surprise.

The now-flustered blond covered the woman’s mouth.

“Mmph!”

“Thi-this has been incredibly rude of us. As had been said, when it comes to books, she’s more or less one to get too caught up in things... Could I possibly beg your forgiveness in this matter?”

When the one who had blocked her mouth drew back, the woman remained silent, and a contemplative look floated across her face.

“Ah, yeah...”

Woo managed a nod in response. As far as Lu knew, of all those who had gone against Woo, not a one had come out of it without some injury, be it large or small. This time Woo had seemingly been overpowered.

The woman’s voice, her eyes, her expression: all of these were simply overwhelming.

Employing a pleasant tone of voice, the blond tried to put things back in line.

“Just as I’d expected of Master Woo. No, no, it’s truly been an honor to meet you.”

“Not so fast with the ‘has been’ — how about paying up first?”

Woo’s gaze began to regain its focus. Now that the situation was returning to his preferred pace, that gaze was able to cling to a clear goal.

“Yes indeed. Here we are.”

The blond placed another case on the table’s surface. Unlike Woo’s case, this was of a common sort.

“Go right ahead.”

He opened the case and turned it, as with the other, toward Woo and Lu. A total of $3,000,000 was neatly arrayed in rows of bundled bills.

“Show me.”

In accordance with Woo’s request, the blond slid the case toward him. Lu picked up one bundle of bills.

“..........................”

His facial expression did not change; however, the atmosphere was suddenly heavy and oppressive. Lu thrust the upturned back of the bundle toward Woo.

“.................. The hell is with this, you British bastard?”

Woo’s voice was quiet. The cold rage was audibly restrained, as the bundle’s underside was, quite against expectations, blank. This wasn’t a bundle of bills. It was a packet of paper.

“Oh, what you see before you? It’s paper. Nothing more.”

“Don’t mess around!”

That wasn’t so much a mere expression of anger as a raging roar. Woo crushed the paper packet and hurled it at the two across the table. With an effortless movement, the blond intercepted the paper that was aimed at him, but the paper that went toward the woman scored a direct hit on her chest, as she had both arms wrapped around the book.

“So all you brought to pay for this book is this paper trash? That's how the English work, eh?”

Lu reached behind him and drew his gun. The gun’s barrel was first aimed at the blond. He was ready to open fire at Woo’s command.

“The British way is one of courtesy and fair play. Not to be rude, but it doesn’t look like you two use either of those.”

“The hell?” Woo’s voice had diminished after the blond’s statement.

“This book was stolen 25 years ago from the British Library. According to our research, the theft had been carried out by a certain syndicate.”

“What’re you trying to say?”

“The British Library’s Special Operations Division, a division that we are a part of, will return this book to the place where it should be.”

Woo remained silent and instead drew his own gun.

“One moment; hear me out. Wouldn’t you rather resolve this situation peacefully? It’s alright to just hash things out verbally every so often, in my opinion.”

At the blond’s somewhat half-hearted proposal, Woo’s face contorted into a new level of maliciousness.

“You can suck on that in hell.”

“........ That didn’t make much sense, but it’s probably some sort of refusal; is that correct?”

The barrel of Woo’s gun veered toward the woman, who hugged the book even more tightly.

“...... Give that book back.”

“I will not. This is mine now.”

“Actually, it’s the British Library’s.”

“It’s mine, dammit!”

From the woman’s statement to the blond’s and then to Woo’s was the book’s status revised. As they had no intention of paying, Woo felt no need to hesitate. The finger that pulls the trigger has all the power. The gun’s line of fire shifted to the bridge of the woman’s glasses.

The woman’s hand shifted to grasp the paper that had struck her chest.

Woo pulled the trigger, and a bullet burst from the gun.

The report of the gun was swallowed up by the barren expanse of the floor.

“What?!”

Woo’s eyes widened.

The woman’s face had lost all color, but not due to the expected blood loss from a gunshot wound. The bullet that should have smashed her glasses and opened a hole in her forehead was lost in a mass of whiteness.

A single, raised piece of paper that was held before the woman’s face had stopped it.

“Wha.......?!”

It was definitely the same paper that he had thrown at her. By all appearances, it was the sort of paper you would find anywhere and where it had stopped the bullet, it looked as if it had been ripped by a cat’s claws.

However, before his very eyes, that paper had managed to stop the bullet he had just fired.

“Aaah?!”

Lu reacted faster than even Woo. Changing targets from the blond to the woman, he immediately followed through and pulled the trigger. The bullet roared forth unstoppable.

“Whoa! Ah, ah, ex-excuse me!”

That voice had sufficient volume to make a pool’s contents slosh over its sides. The woman began to sling individual sheets of paper until every bullet had been stopped.

“What—what would you have done if the book got hit?!”

Eyes bulging with shock, Lu looked to Woo. Before giving him an answer, Woo again pointed the gun at the woman.

If they both fired at once, surely she wouldn’t be able to completely handle the assault. That was how his current plan went.

However, the woman had, right at that moment, begun to catch on.

“Really now!”

She neatened her packet of papers and then fired them off into space.

The sheets of paper formed a storm of fluttering paper, which divided the area into two sections like a white wall.

The pure white barrier hid the woman and her ally from Woo, Lu, and their bullets alike.

By the time the continuous hail of bullets had knocked down every sheet of paper in the wall, the blond and the woman had seemingly up and disappeared.

As Woo stood dumbfounded, a piece of paper flew out of nowhere and sliced his gun open as if the paper were a razor.

“Shi—“

Woo nearly dragged Lu over to the table and dove for cover beneath it. The next moment, with a sharp woosh that sliced the air, more paper flew toward the spot where they had been standing.

“Whoa, whoooa!”

As Woo tried to calm Lu, who had started to panic, he pulled the paper from his gun and tore it up.

“A paper master...”

“?!”

“I’ve heard of ‘em. Like the name says, they’ve got some unnatural power that lets them use paper as weaponry.”

A paper airplane flew by and tacked toward Lu’s feet. On its surface, it bore the words, “That is correct.”

“?!”

The blond’s voice echoed forth from an unknown location.

“So you did know. Indeed.”

Lu forgot the situation and rose to fire off some more shots.

“Gaaah!”

At Lu were now aimed a veritable flood of paper airplanes.

“Idiot!”

With a hair’s breath of space remaining, Woo dragged Lu to the floor. Hundreds of paper airplanes rushed through the space above their heads like some sort of storm.

“That’s not paper; those are implements of hell! Don’t make any stupid moves.”

On the huffing and puffing Lu’s face a few cuts were evident.

In front of the pair, like remnants of the paper airplanes, some documents fluttered down. When they picked one up for examination, they found that the documents were articles of surrender. The right to a lawyer, the right to remain silent, and various other stipulations were written out in great detail.

“You’re underestimating me, dammit!”

Giving in to his anger, Woo had to snap rattlingly back.

“Umm, it would probably be best for you to surrender. In such a case, you’d receive proper judgment.”

“Agent Paper, Negotiation would be meaningless. Please don’t try to speed up the process.”

“Ok...”

“We can’t win now! Who the hell could get a monster like they have, anyway?”

After a paper-like silence, a pitiful crying noise was heard.

“..................Sniff, sniff.”

“Er, I would like you not to hurt my agent’s feelings, thank you.”

“Shuddup!”

Lu didn’t like what he saw in the angrily shouting Woo.

“Now don’t get scared. This is just how I fight.”

Woo took the snake from his breast.

“It’s better if I get to kill her in person.”

Standing suddenly, Woo took off his suit-jacket and shirt and threw them aside. The physique beneath was wrapped in metal snakes that looked at if they bound him. Donning the snake-attachment that had peeked from his breast pocket, he also had lined up in his belt other, identical snake heads, as well as three more snake bodies.

On his naked upper half, he was marked with living snake scales, producing an eerie effect on the onlooker.

A paper airplane flew toward the now-revealed Woo.

“Die!” He gripped the snake by the tail and began to spin it.

The snake smoothly released from Woo’s body, forming a whip as if went; the snake-whip then struck at the oncoming paper airplane. The struck plane crashed down to pierce the table.

“Ho!” The blond’s voice held mingled appreciation and wonder.

“How many of her paper weapons can you put up against my snakes!”

Toward the broadly grinning Woo flew another, larger paper airplane.

“Die, die, die, die, die! And, die!”

Moving too quickly for it to register with his lackey, his snake struck out violently. The paper airplane was knocked from the air, and individual bits of paper fluttered about like snow. Beyond the paper haze, a human shape floated in and out of sight.

“Kill them!”

Lu leapt forward and began to charge toward the figures.

“Gwaaah!”

Lu’s tackle knocked down the shape leaning against the table’s surface; however...

“Gwah?!”

This was neither the woman nor the blond; instead, it was the life-size idol stand-up used at Shueisha’s spring book fair.

“Get back here; it’s a trap!”

It was too late. In the blink of an eye, from the edge of the table, from the ceiling, from the masses of trash, an onslaught of paper tape was triggered, centered on the stand-up's position.

“!”

In the next instant, the tape began to circle Lu; a unified assault was starting.

“Arrrrgh!” The tape began to wind around his body. Despite his struggles, Lu rapidly took on the appearance of a mummy. Not letting up for even an instant, the tape began to quickly tighten around his body.

“Shi—!“

From behind the back of Woo, who had headed toward Lu to help him, came the sound of rustling paper.

Turning about to face the threat, Woo whipped the snake around. However, what came flying at him weren’t paper airplanes, but instead, unfolded sheets of paper. That paper, no thicker than ordinary writing paper, was beyond the snake’s power to stop.

The deflected papers cast a shadow over Woo’s face as they disappeared behind him.

“So, how about it? Have you warmed to the thought of surrendering?”

Behind the mummified Lu, Woo licked the blood that had trickled down from his forehead.

“Well, they do call me the ‘Reading Snake’, ya know, and it’s not ‘cause I use this guy.”

Woo ripped off his snake’s head, tossed the rest away, and equipped a new attachment to the snake. From its mouth emerged the sharp point of an edged weapon. Across Woo’s face drifted a diabolical grin sharp enough to shatter any blade.

“Blame my nature. I’ve just gotta kill me some prey.”

“.... I understand completely. ...... Agent Paper—!”

At that instant, another storm of paper rushed toward Woo.

Woo loosened his grip on the snake. With that, the snake collapsed and merged into itself, thus transforming it from a whip into a rod.

“Die!”

Woo caused the snake-rod to spin rapidly, as if it were a baton. One after the other the paper sheets that had flown at him folded before the snake-rod, and were scattered.

Beyond the resultant paper storm, Woo spotted, beneath a desk, the hand that had launched the paper.

“I’ve got ya now!”

Knocking all of the paper away, he wielded the snake-rod like a spear to pierce through the desk. He then he levered it up and hurled it away. The desk smashed through a window and descended into the darkness of the night.

Beyond where the now dealt-with desk once stood, knelt the woman. A lone piece of paper lay on the floor.

“Huh?!”

As her location was now compromised, the woman began to shamefully crawl away. However, her path had been blocked.

“Bah!” Woo’s snake-blade now pointed straight at her throat.

“You’re done for, Agent Paper.”

He thrust his chin in Lu’s direction and gave an order.

“....Let’im out of there.”

The paper tape that had been binding Lu loosened immediately, and his heavy form thudded down onto the floor.

“Gwaaa!”

Tearing the remaining tape off of him, Lu rose to his feet.

“... You just weren’t good enough, Agent Paper.”

“... I’m sorry. ...”

Her voice carried a tinge of sadness. However, this wasn’t kind of sadness that comes of being up to the ears in deadly danger; it was instead that seen in a student who had scored badly on an exam. That attitude angered Woo.

“You get out here too, you British bastard!”

“Sure. Here we go.”

Soon, from beneath a neighboring desk the blond’s form took shape. The woman was as shocked as Woo that he hadn’t spotted the blond.

“Well, I’ve come to appreciate what ‘the Reading Snake’ truly means. I have learned from this.”

“... Line up.”

The blond positioned himself by the side of the nervously standing woman. Just as they had at the start of the deal, the four participants faced each other at two hand spans’ range.

“Now we kill you.”

“Before that... why not surrender to us? If you’d do that for us, then surely the cleanup after all this would be so much easier?”

Nowhere in the blond’s speech was the slightest hint of nervousness to be found.

“You want us to do WHAT?! You dumb ass, you must have wastepaper where your brains’d be.”

“...In the end, it was futile. I suppose there’s nothing to be done about it, you know?”

The blond and the woman exchanged looks.

“Let’s move to the endgame.”

“Yes...”

Woo, for his part, was now angry at the fact that his two opponents were not showing any fear at all. It felt like this ridiculous night was racing toward its climax. When the feeling came to a crescendo, more words burst forth.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll goddamn kill you right now!”

The woman looked at the two opponents with a jolted expression. However, the one who opened his mouth to speak was the blond.

“Excuse me, but the fighting is going to end now.”

“What?”

“Ah—to put it this way, just coming here was a loss for you two.”

The blond pointed toward the table where the two groups had met.

“.......”

Without thinking, Woo looked where the blond had pointed. The table was just a bit warped. It was a small imperfection, no bigger than the mouth of a beer bottle.

Internally, Woo flashed back to a recent memory. It was one of the woman’s drool.

“Can’t be!!”

Woo’s thoughts had arrived at an absurd conclusion. Was it really that?!

“That is quite correct.”

So that was it. The blond laughed.

“...... I’m sorry.”

The woman had dropped her head.

At the same time, Woo and Lu’s knees bent out wildly. The feedback they were receiving from their legs had to be illusory. The floor on which they stood was now heaving and jumping beneath them. Their footing became uncertain, their balance was thrown off, and soon they found it impossible to remain standing. A horrible, uncomforting memory rushed back to them.

“Freaking stupid?! This, THIS?!”

Looking next to him, he found that Lu had fallen down. Lu’s face was screwed up, as if he were about to cry. Looking beyond the floor to the walls and ceilings, it was clear that the building was folding in on itself.

“This is----------?!”

Proving Woo’s presumption to be fully correct, the floor collapsed. Below that, the abyss of 30th floor gaped up at them. The “tear” swallowed up Woo and Lu in the space of a breath.

Burnt into the vision of the plummeting Woo were the remains of the rent paper floor and, from above that, the form and concerned expression of the woman who peered down after him.

On what had up until noon that day been mere reclaimed land, the building folded onto itself and collapsed. A dry, rustling noise paralleled its fall.

Shredding and scattering the remaining bits of the building, a helicopter’s form appeared in the midst of the scene. Tossing petal-like pieces of paper around, it rose to a high elevation, in nearly the blink of an eye.

In the front seat was a blond, sunglass-wearing form.

“This is Joker. Repeat, this is Joker. All mission stages have been completed safely. After the acquisition, as well as protection, of the target, I would like to request that it be sent in for processing. Joker is now heading home, as is The Paper. Report to be given on a later date. Joker out.”

After finishing his report over the radio, “Joker” massaged his neck.

“Aaah, so tired. After all, when the ones you have to deal with are unsavory sorts, it really grates on the nerves.”

Joker sent his next statement to the seats at the rear. “Good work, Yomiko. I’ll be sure to take you to Jimboch......”

His words did not make it through to the girl with the glasses—Yomiko.

She was completely immersed in “Black Maxims for Youth”, as if she were intending to devour it. Her eyes eagerly chased after the characters, and Joker’s voice and the roar of the helicopter were lost in her oblivion.

Beneath her large, hard glasses, her dark eyes moved incessantly.

“Well, well.”

Joker shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the front.

The pilot raised his voice excitedly. “Pa-paper master! So they really do exist. I feel greatly honored to be able to work with one! I-if it’s ok, afterward, a signature...”

Turning to Yomiko, enrapt in her book, Joker laughed.

“No trouble, no trouble at all. Ah, but until she’s finished reading, she won’t hear a thing we say. It’s a weakness of hers.”

Desires, criticisms, and anything else was inaudible to her. Yomiko Readman, “The Paper”, had submerged herself completely in the pleasure of reading. She had even forgotten the faces of Woo and Lu.

She loved books more than anything; indeed, anything at all.

The helicopter left the dark town of Daiba behind it, as the moonlit night flew to the four corners of the capital’s core.