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“Mind if I tag along? I do love a good urban legend every now and again.”
Rindo looked up at the stream of people heading up and down the narrow street of Spain Hill. The speaker was instantly obvious, his black, wrought iron wings jutting out proudly into the people who passed through him undeterred. He had the smug, self-satisfied smirk of a man cheating in a game of cards, and the posture of one who knew he would get away with it.
He looked vaguely familiar, Rindo thought. Maybe I saw him some time last week?
“Yo, Priss-kid? You a Reaper now?”
“Beat, you… know this guy?” Rindo asked.
The Reaper giggled, twirling a lock of ash-blonde hair around his finger. “Yes, Beat. After our last game, I decided to switch things up and try my hand at being a Reaper.”
Ah. So he was a Player in Beat’s Game three years ago.
“Ain’t that a downgrade?”
“I suppose, if that’s how you choose to see it.”
Beat stared for a second, then shrugged. “Dunno why you’d do that, but aight. Whatever works for you.”
“Hang on, who are you?” Fret asked, a slight frown marring his face.
Another giggle. Rindo’s skin crawled--something about this guy just gave him the creeps, like he didn’t quite belong here and reality was rippling to accommodate his presence. Which sounded incredibly stupid, even in his head. And Beat seemed to be on friendly terms with him, so what reason did Rindo have to be paranoid?
“How rude of me,” the Reaper said. “My name is Yoshiya Kiryu. You may call me Joshua.”
“Well, I’m Tosai Furasawa. You can call me Fret!”
See! Rindo told himself. Fret got over his apprehension, so can you!
Nagi briefly nodded her head. “Nagi Usui,” she said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Joshua nodded back absently, but as Nagi was speaking, his eyes found Rindo and stayed there. Rindo squirmed, stomach churning. The gaze was shameless and prodding, like he was looking for something specific.
“And you?”
“Oh.” Rindo dug his hands deeper into his pockets. Joshua had been staring at him for an uncomfortably long time, but having his full attention turned toward him still caught Rindo off-guard. “Uh, Rindo Kanade. Can we keep working on the mission now, or… something?”
“Of course,” Joshua said. “I’d hate it if you stopped on my account. Don’t worry, I won’t distract you. It’ll be like I’m not even here.”
“Great,” Rindo muttered. “So… the eighteenth step?”
“Yeah! Let’s get it!”
Fret and Beat ran ahead towards the stairs, with Joshua following behind at a leisurely pace. Rindo made to follow them, but Nagi caught his hand.
“Wait,” she said, eyeing Joshua until he was out of earshot before turning her attention back. “Lord Rindo, I advise that we exercise caution around Yoshiya. I am sensing something is amiss with our new companion.”
Rindo chuckled nervously. “Uh, yeah, I was getting strange vibes from him, too. Thank God it’s not just me. Any idea what his deal is?”
Nagi shook her head. “Unfortunately, I have no clue.”
“Great.” He sighed.
“YO!” Beat yelled from up ahead. “You guys coming?”
“Just a sec!” Rindo yelled back. “Well, thanks anyway, Nagi.”
“Twas nothing. I simply implore you to be careful and alert in the event that he chooses to show his true colors, whatever those may be. Until then, let’s not keep our teammates waiting.”
“Right…”
They caught up to the others just in time to see Beat wobble and curse.
Fret grabbed his arm, steadying him. “You all right?”
“Yeah. Jus’ tripped s’all”
Joshua let out that grating giggle. “You should be more careful where you’re walking, Daisukenojo. Especially when we’re only a slip, trip, and a fall from Hell.”
Beat bristled. “Don’t call me that!”
“My bad,” Joshua said, not apologetic in the slightest.
“The slip guard is conspicuously absent,” Nagi said, thankfully diverting attention back to the task at hand.
“I guess that’s what got Beat.” Fret paused. “Wait, is that it? Just a missing slip guard? How anticlimactic.”
A shriek rang out from next to them, and they turned to see a young woman picking herself up from off the ground.
“Oh my gosh, are you okay?” the girl next to her asked, reaching down to help her friend up. Said friend let out another shriek, jumping to her feet and sprinting up the rest of the stairs.
“She doesn’t seem very ‘okay’ to me,” Fret said. “Hey Rindude, think you could scan her and find what’s up?”
Rindo shrugged. “Sure.” He trudged up the stairs after her, taking out his Player Pin.
What was that? A shiver ran down my spine as soon as I fell. It was so creepy.
Really? Rindo thought. A shiver? That’s it?
He conveyed this to the rest of the group.
“Huh. I didn’t feel nothin’ like that,” Beat said.
“Maybe you have to actually fall down to feel it,” Rindo guessed.
“So one’a us’s gotta fall down the stairs?”
“Seems like it.”
“So… any takers?” Fret asked hopefully.
No one responded.
“Someone’s gotta do it,” Rindo grumbled. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna volunteer, though.
“Aight. Then how we finna decide this?”
“Hmm? What are you waiting for?” Joshua piped up and looked directly at Rindo. “If anyone should take one for the team, it’d be you. You are the team leader, right?”
“Uh, yeah?”
Joshua’s expectant gaze felt like a physical weight. Like this was a test of some sort.
Rindo gulped. “O-Okay? I guess I can do it.”
“Don’t listen to him, Rindude. Let’s just do rock, paper, scissors.”
“N-No, he’s right. It should be me.”
“Lord Rindo, if I may suggest--”
But Rindo was already on his way down to the eighteenth step, Joshua’s eyes still burning and heavy on his back. He took a deep breath, then went boneless, letting himself fall.
“Rindude!” Fret was by his side in an instant. “Are you okay?”
“Mostly, yeah. Just--ow…” Rindo rubbed his tailbone and cringed. “I think I’m going to have a bruise, but that’s about it. Maybe this was a bust.” He started to get up, but a sudden pain in the small of his back forced him back down.
It wasn’t a shiver down his spine; it felt like getting stabbed with a dull knife. A wave of cold dread washed over his body--what was that? What kind of horrible, invisible thing must be lurking nearby--
“Oh my god,” he gasped.
“You’re going to have to speak up, Rindo. It’s not like we can scan you.”
“Aw, can it, Priss!” Beat snapped. Then, in a more gentle voice: “You okay, man?”
“Yeah, I just… I mean, I definitely felt something.”
Fret took out his Player Pin, eyebrows furrowing in concentration as he scanned. Then his eyes shot open. “Dudes! Noise alert!”
A scorpion Noise lunged at them, and the Wicked Twisters fell clumsily into battle. Rindo knew he wasn’t doing as well as he normally could, the echoes of the scorpion’s sting ghosting across and inside his body, sending him into several bouts of shivers. When the Noise finally went down, he braced himself against the wall, panting and disoriented. His eyes met Fret’s, but Fret didn’t comment. Instead, he let out a sigh and wiped his forehead.
“So, it was just some Noise?”
“Jus’ hanging out there, looks like. Damn.”
“It looks like we’ve got all the info we need now,” Rindo said. “Let’s report back to that Reaper.”
“‘Let me tag along,’ he said. ‘I won’t distract you,’ he said,” Rindo grumbled as Joshua started going on yet another tangent about the history of some building they probably passed five minutes ago.
It’ll be like I’m not even here.
Yeah, right. Joshua was, apparently, nothing but an enormous distraction, sharing useless comments and bits of trivia about nearly everything they saw, and even things they didn’t see.
“We should go to Cat Street next. There’s an urban legend there, right?” he said, unprompted. “Did you know the Shibuya River runs under Cat Street? Ah, and my favorite cafe used to be there. It closed down a couple years ago, though. What a shame.”
“Would it kill you to be quiet for more than, like, two seconds?” Fret snapped. “There aren’t any plant-covered buildings with arches on Cat Street, so unless you actually solve the mission, we don’t want to hear it, okay?”
Damn . Joshua must have really pissed him off to make Fret so overtly hostile. I wonder what happened…
“MODI!” Beat exclaimed suddenly. “Plants on the building, between two roads, arches--it’s MODI in Tower Records, yo!”
“Very astute, Lord Beat,” Nagi said. “Lead the way.”
He did, nearly vibrating with excitement. Rindo, meanwhile, was filled with a sense of dread as he remembered the second part of the Scramble Crossing’s urban legend: walk counterclockwise in a circle and you’ll die in seven days. What if Joshua volunteered him to do that, too? He wasn’t looking forward to dying, especially since he just learned that he wasn’t actually dead.
He didn’t have to worry for long, though, because Beat marched right up to MODI and walked in a fearless circle.
They only had to wait a minute for someone to show up: a bored-looking Reaper in a red hoodie who perked up slightly upon seeing who was waiting for him.
“Hey, Twisterinos,” he said. “I’ve been watching you kids for a while now. So, exactly what kinda business have you got with me? Lemme guess: trying to rack up points?”
“Um, I guess?” Rindo said, tapping his phone against his cheek.
“We’re investigating urban legends for one of your Reaper buddies,” Fret clarified. “For points.”
The Reaper looked confused. “What’s that got to do with me?”
“Legend has it that every day, a certain location in Shibuya appears for the briefest of seconds on the jumbotron in Scramble Crossing, and any unfortunate soul who walks counterclockwise in a circle at that place shall die in seven days,” Nagi explained.
“We did all that and it led us to you,” Fret said. “So what’s up?”
“Ah,” the Reaper said flatly. “That.” He sighed dramatically. “Okay, fine, maybe I was using the jumbotron to advertise my location to Players. The deal is, pay me 300,000 yen for a round against some Noise, and you get some points.”
“That kind of… sounds like a total rip-off.” Rindo’s lip twisted in disgust. “We can just fight Noise for free by scanning.”
The Reaper bristled. “Hey, I gotta make money somewhere!”
“What’s any of this got to do with the RG, anyway?” Fret asked.
“Whaddya mean?” the Reaper said. “Oh, those punks with a sixth sense. Yeah, a few people from the RG picked up on my subliminal messaging. But they were getting in the way, so I sent ‘em packing.”
“Well,” said Joshua--and goddamnit, Rindo had just managed to forget he existed. “At least some of them will finally understand what they’ve been seeing now, heehee.”
Heehee. Not a giggle that time, he actually said “heehee.” But more importantly-- what the hell?
“That’s pretty harsh, yo,” Beat said, carefully, like he wasn’t quite sure how to react.
“Not really.” Joshua idly played with his hair as he stared up at the arch above them. “Some people--those with a sixth sense , as our Reaper friend put it--can feel or see things in the UG while still in the RG. I’ve heard cases where they can even see Players, Noise, Reapers, the like.” He lowered his gaze and raked his eyes over each member of the Wicked Twisters instead. “That sounds like it would be quite… confusing, and distressing, no? So wouldn’t it be a relief to finally know just what it is you’ve been seeing? That it’s all real?”
“Dude, that’s so messed up,” Fret breathed out in disbelief.
Joshua just shrugged, taking out his phone like the conversation no longer interested him. Which was--weird. Everything seemed to interest him. So why was he suddenly acting bored now? Or, perhaps a better question was why was this getting to him?
He was a Shibuya Reaper, and had been a Player alongside Beat before that, which meant he had to have been alive. Well, obviously. But maybe...
“Did you--”
The sudden strange silence evaporated in an instant, that infuriating smirk back on his face. “I think it’s time for me to take my leave.” He pointed to the wings on his back. “I do have a job to do, after all.”
“Hey, wait!”
But he had already vanished. Not flown away, vanished , like he was never there to begin with.
Rindo blinked in shock. “Have Reapers always been able to do that?”
“Joshua’s a bit of an oddball, to put it lightly,” the Wall Reaper, who was miraculously still around, said. “Popped up outta nowhere a few weeks ago but claims he’s been a Reaper for years. Just be glad he left you alone.”
“Yeah, I don’t really care how he left, as long as he’s gone,” Fret said. “Now we can get through this day in peace. Right, Rindude?”
Rindo’s gaze hadn’t left the spot Joshua disappeared from. “... Yeah.”
The next time they saw Joshua, it was day five of their third week in the game and they had just begun walking to Cat Street, where Neku’s Reaper contact was. No sooner had Rindo found himself praying that Neku’s contact wasn’t Joshua then Joshua’s voice rang out from behind them. Speak of the devil...
“Welcome back, partner.”
Fret groaned loudly. “ Please , dude, I am so not in the mood for--”
“Joshua,” Neku said flatly.
“Kweh?”
Rindo’s first thought was: oh God, please no. His second thought was: shouldn’t Neku sound happier? Because he didn’t sound happy like he would if his contact had just spared them a walk across Shibuya. No, he sounded… resigned, vaguely annoyed, and… something else. Something positive. Fond, maybe?
Rindo turned around to see Neku with his arms crossed and Joshua smiling wider than he ever had in the time he spent with the Twisters. Which was, admittedly, not very long, but his ever-present smile seemed so… fake now, in comparison.
Neku eyed Joshua, his lip twitching. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?” Joshua replied in obvious mock-innocence. “I’m trying to stay alive. In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been a nasty outbreak of Plague Noise, and not even Reapers are immune.”
“But you aren’t a Reaper. So what are you doing pretending to be one?”
Everyone went quiet, before Fret forced a nervous laugh. “Uh, whaddya mean?” he asked. “Of course he’s a Reaper, got the wings and everything.”
Neku didn’t break eye contact with Joshua, even as Joshua’s grin twisted into something far more sly, something that reminded Rindo of their first real meeting, how Joshua made his skin crawl.
Neku continued, “Joshua is Shibuya’s Composer.”
The reaction was, for the most part, underwhelming. Rindo didn’t really know what a “composer” was--something to do with music, maybe? Fret and Nagi shared his blank look, and Beat didn’t seem surprised, either. A little confused, maybe, but not surprised. Shoka, however--she took a step back, eyes widening.
“Wha--he’s the Composer?”
Joshua almost pouted, looking at Neku like a disappointed parent. “Really, Neku? You couldn’t just let me have a little fun?”
Neku didn’t even flinch. “Your city is dying. Now is not the time for ‘fun,’ or whatever it is you’re actually trying to do here.”
“Hmm. Okay, then. What do you expect me to do, Neku?”
“Something. Anything . Save your damn city.”
Joshua raised an eyebrow and held one of his hands up. “While I can’t go into specifics, I’m afraid my hands are well and truly tied. I’ve already done all I can. My choices were to either sit back and observe from the outside or watch the show unfold in person.”
“ Why , Joshua,” Neku said, firm, just on the verge of harsh.
“That’s classified.” Joshua took out his phone, glanced at it dully, then slipped it back into his pocket in such a way that left Rindo doubting that he was even checking it. It seemed like the action was more for show than anything else. “Well, this has been fun, but I think it’s time for me to go.”
He turned to leave, but Neku grabbed his hand.
“Wait.” And there was definitely a soft sort of fondness in his voice this time. “Can I trust that you aren’t behind this, and that you won’t let Shibuya be erased?”
“That’s your prerogative, dear partner . And whether Shibuya is saved or not, well--” He looked directly at Rindo. “--That’s all up to you.”