Kato Ginjiro's car pulled into a car park in central Machida and he got out stretching with the specific creak of someone who has spent too long sitting in a space that was not designed with their comfort in mind.
"Finally," he said, looking at the sky with the expression of someone celebrating a minor victory. "Machida, it's been a while."
The centre of Machida at that hour of the afternoon had that specific density of commercial districts when people leave work and decide the street is a good place to be — too many people going in too many directions simultaneously, with the accumulated noise of footsteps and conversations and the occasional car that had not quite understood there were more pedestrians than available space.
Kato walked through the crowd with his hands in his pockets and the expression of someone who has a specific destination and is not entirely prepared to let the number of people between him and that destination stop him.
"Why are there so many people here?" he murmured, dodging a woman with shopping bags. "It's not as though it were a festival."
He kept walking.
He turned left onto a narrower street. Then another to the right. Then along an alley that was not visible from the main street if one did not know it was there — and at the far end, almost completely hidden by the shadow of the buildings on either side, there was a wooden sign with letters that had lost some of their original colour but which still said what they needed to say.
Kato read it and smiled.
"At last," he said.
The bouncer at the entrance was large in the specific way that people are large when they have trained to be and use that size as the first line of communication with anyone who approaches. He looked at Kato with the brief assessment of someone who has practice at assessing.
Then he nodded.
"Kato," he said, stepping aside.
"Thanks, big guy," said Kato, passing by and giving him a pat on the shoulder.
The inside of the bar had that deliberate darkness of places that have decided that dim lighting is part of the proposition — low lights, dark wooden tables, the sound of conversations that did not quite reach noise level because each one stayed in its own space. Behind the bar there were shelves with bottles that reflected the little available light in ways that varied depending on the colour of the liquid.
Kato greeted several people as he crossed the space — with the ease of someone who knows the place well enough for the place to know him.
He reached the bar. He sat down.
"Whisky," he said.
The barman nodded and started preparing it in silence.
Kato looked at the bottles on the shelves without seeing any of them in particular, with the expression of someone thinking about something that was not in any of those bottles.
"It's unusual to see you around here."
The voice came from the left — low, with that specific cadence of someone who knows exactly how they sound and uses it with the same ease with which they use anything else they have.
Kato turned.
The woman who had sat down beside him had white hair — not the white of age but of someone who was born with that colour or chose it so long ago it had become part of what she was — gathered in a way that was somewhere between carelessness and calculation, with a few loose strands reaching her shoulders. She was around thirty, with a build that suggested she knew how to take care of herself, and a way of looking that mixed direct attention with something more that did not quite resolve into any single thing.
"Kasumi," said Kato, with his usual smile. "I got lost."
Kasumi Shirogane laughed — short, with the specific enjoyment of someone who was expecting exactly that response.
"How strange," she said, resting her elbow on the bar and her cheek in her hand. "That whenever you get lost you end up with a whisky in your hand."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Kato.
The barman set the glass in front of him.
"Here is your whisky, sir," he said.
Kasumi looked at the glass. Then at Kato with that expression she had when something amused her, but she preferred not to say it fully.
Kato just smiled.
"You haven't changed at all," said Kasumi.
"What can I say?" said Kato. "I've always been like this."
Kasumi looked at him for a moment longer with that attention that mixed several things — recognition, something harder to classify, and beneath all of it the direct reading of someone who has spent a long time dealing with people and has learned to get to the point.
"If you came it's because you're looking for something," she said. "What are you looking for?"
"You were always very direct," said Kato.
"You know how I am," said Kasumi, in that voice that dropped slightly in register when she said certain things. "Let's sit at a table. That way we can talk properly."
"Fine by me," said Kato.
The table at the far end of the bar was the most removed from the others — the one chosen by people who want to have a conversation without anyone being able to join it without warning. Kasumi sat with the fluidity of someone who knows the space and knows where she likes to be in it. Kato sat opposite her with the whisky in his hand.
"I'll get to the point," said Kato.
"That's what I like most about you," said Kasumi, with a smile that had more than one layer.
"Have you seen any unusual remnants lately?" said Kato.
Kasumi looked at him. The smile changed in nature — it did not disappear, but became more serious without ceasing to be hers.
"Lately my people have had one or two unpleasant experiences," she said. "Not long ago one appeared." She paused, and something in her expression suggested the memory still had weight. "Destroyed clothing. A mask. Chains on its arms. And it spoke."
She rested her fingers on the table with the gesture of someone evoking something they would rather not evoke fully.
"Every time I think about it, it gives me chills," she said, in that tone of hers that made even uncomfortable things sound like something she was telling specifically to him. "And very few things give me chills."
"Are your people all right?" said Kato.
Kasumi sighed.
"The creature didn't seem to want to fight," she said. "It simply left. My people didn't follow it because they sensed something different about it. A feeling they hadn't had before." She paused. "I can't blame them either. Seeing a remnant like that would give even me a fright."
Kato turned the glass in his hand, thinking.
Destroyed clothing. Mask. Chains. It speaks.
It was not the same profile as the ones the students had encountered, nor Mukuro's. But the category was the same — something that thought, something with a presence that went beyond the instinctive.
"My students have seen strange things lately too," said Kato. "Remnants with powers greater than the rest. That spoke. That thought like people." He paused. "This is too much to be a coincidence."
Kasumi was watching him with that attention now fully on him.
"One of my students is with Kagami in Misato right now," said Kato.
Kasumi blinked.
"Did you say Kagami?"
"Yes."
"Kagami Ryo?" said Kasumi, with something in her voice that was not exactly surprise but the recognition of a name she had not expected to hear.
"The very one."
"How long it's been since I heard anything about him," said Kasumi, slowly. "I thought he didn't want to be a hunter anymore."
"That was the case," said Kato. "But let's say he came back."
Kasumi smiled — more genuine this time, with something that resembled the affection of someone who remembers a person fondly, even if they have not seen them for a long time.
"Doesn't surprise me," she said. "With how persistent you are."
Kato moved the glass in a circle on the table.
"Where did your people see that remnant you mentioned?" he said.
"Far from Tokyo," said Kasumi. "Nearly in Chiba." She looked at him. "Why so concerned about these remnants? Is there something more?"
"Lately they're stronger," said Kato. "Kana is asking us to be more cautious and investigate more." He paused. "But that's all I needed to know. Thanks for the information."
Kasumi looked at him with that expression she had when she was processing several things at once without fully showing which ones.
"Are you leaving already?" she said.
"I have to get back," said Kato, standing. "My students must be missing me."
Meanwhile, at the Tokyo headquarters:
Ishida was staring at the ceiling of his room in silence.
Tsukino was in the garden practising with the axe.
Shirogane was reading.
Nobody mentioned Kato.
Back in Machida:
"Nobody misses you," said Kasumi, with a smile.
"Well," said Kato. "Maybe just one."
I do miss you, Master, Kato imagined Amane saying.
He turned and raised his hand in farewell without quite turning fully.
"What a shame you're leaving so early," said Kasumi, in that tone that dropped in register when she spoke of certain things. "And I was looking forward to having a bit of fun."
Kato kept walking towards the exit.
He greeted the bouncer at the door.
"Until next time, big guy."
The street at night had a different rhythm from the afternoon — fewer people, but more noise of a different nature, the noise of places that begin when others end. Kato walked through the crowd with his hands in his pockets and the thought from the conversation inside still taking shape.
The one with the mask and the chains. Mukuro. The ones the students saw.
Were they together? Coordinated? It had been a long time since anything like this had been seen — thinking remnants in sufficient numbers to start appearing in different places at the same time, with different groups of hunters, with a pattern that still did not have a complete shape but had too many coincidences not to be a pattern.
He reached the car.
He got in.
He turned on the radio.
The opening chords of Lemon by Kenshi Yonezu filled the interior of the car with that specific melancholy of the song — the piano notes, the voice, everything that made that song what it was.
Kato turned the volume up.
And for a moment — just a moment, in the car in the Machida car park with the night outside and the song inside — he stopped thinking about remnants and patterns and what Kana was going to say when he told her all of this, and simply listened.
The car started.
Kato left the car park and took the main street with Lemon still at the volume he had set.
Two blocks.
Three.
The car made a sound that was not part of the song.
Then another.
Then the dashboard showed a light that Kato knew well enough to understand what it meant before he had consciously finished processing it.
"How is that possible?" he said, turning down the volume. "I filled it up when I left."
He pulled over to the side of the street and got out. He walked around the car. On the asphalt, below the tank, there was a stain that had not been there before.
Kato looked at it.
"A leak," he said, in the specific tone of someone who has had a perfectly adequate day and has just received the information that it has not finished yet. "This couldn't get any worse."
"Finally alone."
The voice came from behind.
Kato turned slowly.
Two figures were standing about four metres away — humanoid, with that presence he had learned to recognise after decades of hunting, which was not that of people, even though they had the shape of people.
He looked at both of them.
"Sorry, friends, I don't have any money," said Kato.
"We're not interested in your money, Ginjiro Kato," one of the figures replied.
"Remnants?" he said, in the tone of someone who has found something in the least convenient possible place and is assessing what to do about it. "I'm sorry to trouble you, but I have to be going. There are people waiting for me." He paused. "Well — there's one person waiting for me. The others probably don't even remember I exist."
"It doesn't matter if they're waiting," said the one who had spoken, in that cadence thinking remnants had when they used the language. "They'll have to wait longer to see you."
"And to what do I owe the honour?" said Kato. "Why would some remnants come looking for me specifically?"
"We came to see your strength," said the remnant. "We want to know what kind of hunters we're dealing with." It paused. "We were right to come to you first."
"I'll take that as a compliment," said Kato.
"Attack whenever you're ready."
The remnant that had spoken shook its head slightly.
"Not me," it said. "Him."
The second remnant — which had been still until that moment, completely covered by a cloak that reached to its head — moved forward and struck Kato in the back before he had finished processing that it was moving.
The impact made him take a step back.
Kato turned towards the second remnant.
The cloak fell.
What was beneath had destroyed clothing — not worn out through use but destroyed in a way that suggested something had happened to it at some point that was not ordinary. A mask covered the upper half of its face, the kind that does not conceal the expression but replaces it with something that has no expression available. And from its arms, coiled with the looseness of something that belonged there, hung chains.
Kato looked at it.
Could this be the remnant Kasumi mentioned? he thought.
The masked remnant looked at him from behind the mask with those eyes — what little could be seen of them had the same white surface as the others, but with something additional that Kato could not immediately classify.
"Are you frightened yet?" said the masked remnant, in a voice that was different from Mukuro's — rougher, slower, like something that does not use words frequently, but knows them.
Kato looked at it.
Then he smiled.
"A simple remnant can't frighten me," he said.
The masked remnant tilted its head slightly.
"Very confident," it said. "Let's see what you're capable of."
The chains tensed on its arms.
And then it launched itself at Kato.