Visual Kei

“I said it once and I’ll say it only once more: The Oni is not here.” I breathed in, trying to contain my frustration. One of the two men guarding the passage to the basement (and The Oni’s office) was a guy with a shitty buzz cut, sunglasses, and an Armani suit that looked a size too small. His upper body looked ready to split the seams and the buttons were about ready to fly off, too.

“I need to speak to him now, Chump Change. Don’t give me this bullshit that he’s not here. I’m one of his elite.”

“I don’t care who you claim to be, little girl. You aren’t going into his office. Now bugger off.”

Reaching up to touch his shoulder, I smiled. I felt the tug in his stomach as he tried to determine my intentions. My fingertips trailed down his suit’s arm. “You don’t believe that I’m one of his elite, do you?” The man said nothing, a bead of sweat running down his face as my hand ventured down his waist. “A little girl like me could never be a part of such an exclusive tier of fighters…” Finally, my fingers brushed his groin, where his mixture of fear and excitement was obvious. I sensed the pull of arousal in his body. My façade crumbled, revealing my sarcastic and irritable self. I clasped his ‘sensitive area’ through his trousers, watching with amusement as his face contorted in pain. “Now, take me to see him before I squash your steroid-shriveled testicles like the grapes they are.” To make my point, I twisted my hand enough to cause him considerable pain.

He collapsed onto the ground, and his face went pale. He vomited, but didn’t look like he had the capability of moving from that spot. Tears coursed down his cheeks from behind his sunglasses. Before he could do as I demanded, he slipped into unconsciousness. I cussed under my breath and turned a smiling face toward the guard who stood on the other side of the door. Before I could ask, he leapt to open the doors.

We walked down a long, dark hallway with either stone or tile floors that radiated cold. The walls were too far apart for me to touch with both arms spread wide, and the sound of his expensive dress shoes clicking against the hard floor echoed loudly in the silent passage. After what seemed like forever, he led me down a spiral staircase. The stairs were narrow and close together, and the walls had narrowed in this passage as well. We walked down stairs for a few minutes before reaching the basement floor. It was significantly colder here than the upper level, and damp. There were several twists and turns in this particular hallway. How many rooms could one guy need? The guard turned and walked quickly, knowing exactly which turns to take and which to ignore. At the end of the hallway stood a solitary door. It looked strange and out of place among all the brick and stone of the passages and walls. The doors before this one were metal and slid like glass doors on oiled tracks. This door, however, was wooden and decorative like the front door to an American house.

The guard nodded brusquely to me and walked away quickly, before I could do any damage to him. I slid the door open easily.

The Oni sat in his usual brown leather seat, across from a woman. He shook his head at my entrance and frowned, stopping the guest in mid-conversation. His office looked cleaner than when I had left it last. The papers were filed away in bookcases and his desk was nearly empty save for some actual office supplies and a packet of papers stapled together nicely. As soon as I stepped into his office, I felt the atmosphere change. This room had strange properties, he’d told me once. Apparently, the stone that his office was built into sapped any supernatural powers from the people inside. If that worked for vampires, I couldn’t say. But I felt the change.

“My guards were supposed to keep this discourse private. What are you doing here, Alice?” he asked curtly.

“Alice?” It was Umi. She was wearing a jacket with belts, straps, and clasps crossing from shoulder to opposite hip. Her pants were leather and several belts wrapped around her boyish hips. She didn’t look like she belonged in this formal office. “You… work for him, don’t you?”

“Hello, Umi.” Other than greeting her, I ignored her for the time being. “I apologize for interrupting, but there is something of paramount urgency that I must speak to you about.”

“It must wait. I have important business that must come first.”

“It can’t. The business you currently conduct may depend on this.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “Speak.”

“It is a… sensitive matter.”

“I apologize, but would you mind?” he asked, bowing his head in apology. Umi nodded, staring at my face as she left. When the door closed behind her, his eyes narrowed even more. “This had best be as vital as you say.”

“I have reason to believe that Seheon Kim may be under mind control.”

His eyes flashed with interest and he leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk. “On what basis is this accusation?”

“The other elite member of our trio, Ray, says his ability does not work on Seheon as it did before. He says that he cannot see into his mind, whereas before, he could.”

“And why did he not tell me, himself?”

“He was afraid that if he were wrong, Seheon may be questioned unnecessarily.”

“You do not have this same fear?”

“It is better to die innocent than to live a mole and endanger everyone.”

He nodded once in approval. “When did this come about?”

“Ray told me less than a week ago. He cannot pinpoint a specific date, but the last mission he could recall being normal was one in which a human boy was infected with a severely mutated form of vampirism.”

“Yes, I remember it clearly. I will have this dealt with.”

“What do you intend to do?”

Leaning back in his chair, he sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “There are tests that must be run, and one of the Orion will probe his mind to see if he is being controlled from an outside source.” He knew I knew nothing of the Orion, but I assumed they had powerful telepathy. “Thank you for your service. Dismissed.”

When I opened the door to leave, Umi was peeking around one of the bends in the long hallway. She motioned for me to come to her. I closed the door behind me and made my way to her hiding place. She pulled me around the corner immediately, her long, skinny fingers digging into my shirt as she held me very near her.

“I don’t have much time to say this,” she whispered quickly, looking around uneasily. “Chino wants to speak to you. Look for him tomorrow night in the shrine beside the nearest river.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I can’t tell you that. Please meet him. And give this to him in two weeks.”

With a skinny hand, she slipped a baby blue envelope into my jacket’s inner pocket. It was slimmer than normal and felt weightless. Before I could ask anything else, she smoothed out her jacket and walked calmly back to The Oni’s office.