"Eurk!"
Hairo let out a repressed yelp as Grand Master Tsumasoran left a smoky scar on his arm. It consisted of what Hairo could only assume was the insignia of the JSPI, a phoenix with lilies.
"Grand Master," Shoto called out sternly. "...You're burning him."
With a gasp, Tsumasoran let go. "...M-My deepest apologies."
She cleared her throat before snapping her fingers. Shoyu Kosaka quickly came to her side, handing her a wallet-shaped badge of premium black leather.
"This is your badge," she explained, handing the badge to Hairo. "You're a Trainee Agent for the Field Operations Division. Your first assignment will be given to you within the next few days. You are now dismissed."
Something within Hairo compelled him to bow with the utmost respect as she walked away from him. With his face pointing towards the floor, his mind was beginning to stir.
"She… sounded like she was on the verge of tears," he thought to himself. "Maybe because Nagatsuki is gone. He was a high-ranking agent."
A twinge of guilt pecked at him, but he shook his head back into reality.
"Kosaka… I mean– Shoto, Kosaka…" Hairo spoke with an odd amount of melancholy.
"Yeah, I know…" he responded, snapping his finger. The surface of the floor in front of Hairo began to swirl and ripple like water. "You want to go home, right? Step through there. You'll be escorted when your assignment comes."
Hairo nodded. He stepped into the water and found himself back in his Tokyo apartment.
* * *
"Hai– I mean, Dr. Kisaragi?!"
A group of nurses, doctors, and other employees of Shizukesa General stood awestruck at the entrance, staring at the anomaly that lay before them. Hairo Kisaragi, but he wasn't there to clock in.
"What are you doing here?!"
"Aren't you out of work because of an accident? What was it?"
Hairo found himself overwhelmed and bombarded with questions. Maybe it was a mistake coming here.
"I uh…" he scrambled for an excuse. "I'm not able to come here often because I was called for work someplace else. The chief knows all about it. I just have some things to take care of here."
Thankfully, that seemed to get him off of their radar.
"Now, I need to get to…"
He expertly walked through Shizukesa General like it was the back of his hand.
"The morgue."
Why?
* * *
"Wait— Hairo," Shoto called out while Hairo was sinking through the water.
"?"
Shoto handed Hairo a small paper rectangle. It was off-white with black kanji characters.
"An omamori?" he questioned, feeling it between his fingers. "Why are you giving this to me?"
Shoto took out a cigarette and lit it in his mouth. "Consider this your first unofficial assignment. I need you to find Nagatsuki's body and put that talisman anywhere close to it."
Hairo raised his brow. "His body? What for?"
"It's the body of a Tengoku, obviously," Shoto responded condescendingly as if Hairo was supposed to know the weight of that word. "It's just for security. You don't want humans to have that kind of body."
"Okay…"
* * *
"Gekkeiju Primary is too small and underfunded to have a morgue..." Hairo mumbled to himself. "So Nagatsuki's body was transferred to Shizukesa."
He stood between two glass doors, reinforced with metal. Amongst the employees dressed in white doctor's coats, Hairo looked like an intruder with his pitch-black attire. It was a good thing that his reputation made him recognizable.
He fidgeted with the paper talisman in his pocket. "I just need… to find his body…"
He tapped his keycard against the scanner while sucking in his breath. With a quick, conspicuous motion, he forced himself into the morgue and immediately closed the door behind him.
Bzz…
The fluorescent lights and blinding white lights made for an excellent unsettling atmosphere, especially for a morgue.
"This is the first time I've been in the morgue…"
Before Hairo stood a long, narrow corridor with walls of metal cabinets, with each of them having an I.D. card plastered in the middle. They were organized alphabetically from surname, so Hairo walked to the middle of the room, to the "N" section.
"Matsuda, Kato… Ah, Nagatsuki."
He found the I.D. card labeled "S. Nagatsuki". He reluctantly opened the cabinet, finding a cold, pale corpse with skin wrapped even tighter around its body. His eyes were sunken in and his chest was stitched closed.
Hairo's breath hitched.
"Ah…"
Hairo promptly closed the cabinet. He was well accustomed to seeing human organs and dead bodies, but to see the body of someone who he previously tried so desperately to help was a different story.
"Just put the talisman here…" Hairo stuck it onto the floor before Nagatsuki's cabinet, before speedwalking to the exit. "And get the hell out."
Just before Hairo scanned himself out, he felt a cold, shaky breath on his neck.
"Dr… Kisaragi…"
It was a warped voice that did not seem fully alive, or even human. Hairo immediately rotated his neck.
"Dr… Kisaragi… Why…"
A bloated, organic monster with barely human features. It had a gaping jaw like an abyss and too many arms for a human. It was trapped in damp fabric that he could barely make out to be a hospital gown.
What's worse, Hairo recognized its face. Hopeful, passionate brown eyes, now sunken and dull, as though the life that it was previously filled with had been corrupted.
"You're…" he muttered in disbelief.
"Dr. Kisaragi… why… couldn't you… save me?"
"Yusuke Sato."
Pwoom!
Hairo's body acted completely on reflex. He tackled his mutated patient with such extreme force that they found themselves hurtling airborne through the narrow corridor, maintaining a vice grip on its gown.
"Y-Yusuke Sato… what… what happened to you?!"
Hairo's chest began to pulse turquoise light in response to his emotional distress. The talisman on the floor that he had previously placed seemed to glow in sync with his heart. It quickly expanded into a convulsing whirlpool of water.
Whether it was intentional or not, Hairo tried to force himself and Yusuke Sato into the portal using their airborne speed. But just before the whirlpool closed, one of Yusuke Sato's many arms desperately grabbed onto the steel wall in defiance.
But what he had grabbed had only moved with him.
Because it was the cabinet containing Nagatsuki's body.
* * *
Vwoom… splash!
Hairo, Yusuke Sato, and Nagatsuki's body were now in the Sanzu River. From a different area, a spire of water rose, and out stepped the Kosaka Twins. They beheld Yusuke Sato's pale, bloated, and mutated form growling at Hairo Kisaragi, who was protecting Nagatsuki's body.
"Agent Kisaragi?!" Shoyu yelled out.
"SHOYU! SHOTO!" Hairo screamed at the top of his lungs. "This– this thing… I don't know what it is, but it's a threat!"
Shoto quickly sprung into action, sprinting at the Yusuke Sato mutation while looking back at Shoyu. "Grab Nagatsuki's body. Hairo and I will take care of that."
"Dr… Kisaragi…?! Why couldn't you save me…?"
Shoto quickly came to Hairo's aid. "What happened?! All you had to do was plant the talisman."
"I did…" Hairo gasped. "But he came out of nowhere. His name is Yusuke Sato. He's… the first patient to die by my care."
Shoto focused his attention on Sato's grotesque form. "I see… okay. Time for a little lesson."
"Huh?"
"What you see there is a Revenant. It's a ghost that lost its sense of self and reason. So that's not Yusuke Sato anymore. That's just what's left of his psyche."
The Sato monster's various hands began to glow with turquoise energy.
"And…" Shoto continued. "They can use ectoplasm. But so can you. So be careful."
Hairo looked at Shoto in disbelief. "You're not gonna help me?!"
"This fight is yours. Besides, I've never had a Revenant inside the Sanzu River. So I want to see how this plays out. Kill him and put his soul to rest, Tengoku."
Hairo groaned, shocked at Shoto's carelessness. "This thing can literally kill me. There shouldn't be time for a lesson."
He quickly stepped forward, taking on his best fighting stance.
"But…" his Ghost Heart pumped and he unsophisticatedly channeled ectoplasm to his fists. "If killing him will free him from that… monstrous form… then I have no choice."
"Dr. Kisaragi… why…"
"Why couldn't you save me?"