"Ken…"
The choking whisper scraped against my consciousness. My eyes snapped open and the first thing I saw was my own hands wrapped tightly around Yoshiro's neck, squeezing the life out of him. I instantly released the grip.
Yoshiro stumbled back and leaned against the wall, clutching his throat and coughing hard.
"Sorry about that." I said, adrenaline still surging through me.
Yoshiro waved a dismissive hand, still hacking. "It's fine. You didn't do it out of your own will." He finally balanced himself and looked at me with confusion. "Are you okay?"
"I wasn't the one being strangled." I retorted, rubbing my own neck instinctively.
"Yeah but you're the one with tears in their eyes." Yoshiro pointed out.
I quickly wiped my face but a quiet sniff still escaped me. "No, I'm good. It's… this toxic atmosphere."
Yoshiro ignored that. "What happened? After you saw that eye, you went unconscious like everyone else. Then you started attacking me with your eyes closed."
"I wasn't unconscious." I said. "I fell into a dream that made everything that has happened in my life feel like it was just a long, bad dream. And that the me in the dream was the real one. That's why no one can get out of their dreams, they think the lie is the truth."
Yoshiro's brow furrowed. "But you woke up, how?"
This guy's question was irrelevant compared to the demonic insult. "All that matters is I'm back now and you're not dead." I replied, walking toward the ragged hole in the floor that led to the level below. "What we need to do now, is find that demon. It's really gotten on my nerves now."
I crouched to the edge and jumped down to the third floor, landing in a low stance.
Yoshiro followed, sliding down the broken edges of the floor, landing less gracefully but quickly recovering.
"Let's split up to… speed up the process of finding the demon." I said immediately, moving toward the first corridor of the third floor.
"And how will we signal to each other when we find it?" Yoshiro asked, looking around the ruined floor.
"Searching all ten rooms can roughly take three minutes. So, anything more than that, we check on each other. And avoid direct contact with that eye."
Yoshiro nodded once. We parted ways, heading down opposite ends of the corridor.
I began opening my side of the doors, and the first three rooms were empty. I yanked the handle of the fourth door and before I could even look around, a man swung a heavy metal pipe at my head.
I caught the pipe instantly and pulled the man off balance, yanking him toward me. In that moment, the thought that he was just a normal citizen controlled by a demon didn't cross my mind. And I landed a punch straight to his face.
The man flew backward, slamming into the opposite wall. Blood immediately blossomed from his nose and mouth.
As I turned for the next door, three more civilians were walking stiffly toward me, their eyes closed too and one was wielding a heavy mop handle.
I shifted into a flash step stance and shot forward. The first one got a flying kick to the chest that sent him spinning into the corner. I then twisted mid-air, landed a spinning kick that cracked the mop handle in half.
The instant my foot touched the ground, I shot a closed fist into the guts of the third man, sending him soaring backward and he crashed into another room.
Suddenly, the floor cracked and exploded a few feet away from the impact of a figure that was launched upward through the shattered ceiling of the second floor, impacting the third-floor hallway right in front of me.
And it was... Takeo? I remember he was knocked unconscious earlier, this means now he was under the demon's spell. And the force that propelled him suggest that someone had kicked or punched him hard from the floor below.
He managed to flip his body mid-air and landed perfectly, then turned to face me. He was gripping twin daggers and he shot toward me. When we met in that alley he was fast but not like this. He closed the distance instantly, swinging the twin daggers in a blinding combination.
Just as I was about to duck under his sweeping swing, Takeo was violently kicked to the side.
And the person who landed next to me was Miss Suzuki. She didn't look like someone who was anywhere near the bomb blast. She turned to me. "Going under those daggers was suicide, Kenichi. Takeo might not be blessed with spiritual energy but as soon as he touches a weapon, he's something else. He's a beast you don't want to underestimate."
I pulled off my tie and wrapped it tightly around my right hand, knotting it securely. "Alright." I said, looking from her to the now recovering Takeo. "Let's take him, then."
Miss Suzuki turned to me fully, shaking her head. "No, I got him. You go after the demon, it's in the surveillance room on the first floor."
I nodded once, trusting her judgment immediately. Though deep down... a part of me, personally wanted to knock the spell out him, but we don't always get what we want. So I turned and ran toward the hole he had done.
The fastest way down was to fall again. I jumped down and as I landed on the second floor, I sprinted toward the stairs, dropping down to the first floor.
And the moment I got to the lobby, I stopped dead because every single body that layed there motionless when we got here, was now standing. Their eyes were closed and they were all holding makeshift weapons.
They were guarding the passage to the surveillance room.
I exhaled slowly. Oh? Now I get it.That's why she sent me down here, so I could deal with an entire floor of possessed civilians, while she gets to fight just one guy.