“Are you sure about this, Iwasaki?”
It was hard not to be anxious. Sure, he was a thrill junky. All his favorite VR games were horror-based. Getting scared was his pastime.
But Kawahara Daisuke never wanted to go quite this far with it.
Sure, exploring ghost spots and abandoned places was part of being a horror junkie. He got that, he understood it. He’d done some exploring before, the both of them had.
But this place was on a different level.
“Somebody died here just last week,” he added, nervously, “It was on the news and everything. Aren’t you at least a bit worried?”
Iwasaki had always been something of a delinquent, pushing the envelope whenever he could. The cocky smirk his friend returned to him was a familiar sight, and one that always heralded the formation of terrible ideas.
“What, you think that’s going to happen to us?” he asked, “It was an accident, wasn’t it? An old run-down place like this is full of things that can kill you if you’re careless.”
He waved his hand dismissively.
“Don’t be a baby. You want to catch sight of a real ghost, right?”
He did, but…
Something about this place didn’t feel right. Maybe it really was because somebody had died in an accident recently, but Kawahara wasn’t so sure about that.
It wasn’t anything so special to look at, not really. That was mostly due to how hold it was. A very aged, broken-down mansion that had to date back at least a couple hundred years wasn’t going to be all that impressive anymore, not when it hadn’t been cared for in so long. Kawahara could see places the roof had caved in.
All this property had belonged to the person who built the mansion, he guessed. At this point, he wondered why it hadn’t been torn down yet.
Then again, there really were an awful lot of places like this, weren’t there? Maybe it just wasn’t a priority. It wasn’t as if this land were high value or anything.
Iwasaki had already pushed on ahead. He was already approaching the door.
“H-hey, wait up!” called Kawahara, picking up the pace to catch up to his friend.
Iwasaki’s cocky grin flashed in the night as he turned around.
“See? Nothing bad ha-“
It sounded like a gunshot. At least, that’s what Kawahara thought it was.
Something warm splashed against his face.
“Wha…?”
It was several moments before his mind caught up to what had just happened.
Iwasaki stood there ahead of him. He was still standing.
His lower jaw hung slack, his tongue lolling.
The upper half of Iwasaki’s head was gone. It looked as if it had been blown away, blood and brain matter splattered across the ground behind him as the body slowly fell backwards.
What he’d felt hit his face was---
Kawahara’s scream could be heard even at the nearby town, before being suddenly silenced.
It was just another morning.
There was no real need for urgency, not today. And so, her morning routine proceeded as normal. A shower, getting dressed, and breakfast.
Her profession required formal wear, and thus that was how she dressed herself. Her red hair tied up into pigtails, a red ribbon on her neck.
Ifrit collapsed in its case.
The ride to work was short. Rather than take a train, she was driven there.
From the outside, the building that housed Branch-092 was entirely unassuming, set away from any public spaces with good reason. Not only did it appear as if it was nothing special in and of itself, but it also wasn’t near enough to any residential areas that any random person could go wandering too close.
Of course, that didn’t mean its perimeter was unguarded, nor did it mean it was the only entrance. Just that sometimes subtlety was better then doing anything that would arouse too much suspicion, and this was the closest entrance for her.
Besides, she considered anyone who would go sticking their nose in here a little bit of an idiot. There wasn’t any reason for the average person to involve themselves with the Branch’s business.
They would just end up getting hurt.
Or worse.
“Welcome, Agent Murakami.”
The entrance was nothing special, either. A simple lobby with a desk run by a few receptionists, where all she had to do was show her identification and have it scanned before being let in. There was more to it then that, as she understood, but it was pretty obvious she was who she claimed to be.
Murakami Arisa proceeded down the smooth, clean, clinical hallway. She knew it was lined with all sorts of security measures that kicked in the moment someone set foot in it. You’d have to be a moron to think that it was just checking and confirming your identity.
There was no way that would be enough.
Naturally, Arisa had nothing to worry about.
At the end was the entrance to the real Branch-092. From outside, it just looked like a simple, albeit particularly large elevator.
The doors opened.
Arisa stepped inside.
“Geh, it’s her,” complained an orange-haired agent, clutching a clipboard to her chest, leaning towards her black-haired friend.
“Geh? Did you really expect me not to hear that?”
Arisa glanced over her shoulder towards them as the elevator began to move.
Neither of them spoke after that.
Rather then directly down, the spacious elevator was instead moving at an angle, steadily, soon enveloped in dark steel.
It was some time before it exited again, coming to a smooth halt.
This was the location of the True Branch-092, and where she performed her duty.
Without glancing back at the other Agents in the elevator, Arisa exited herself, gripping the handle of Ifrit’s case somewhat more tightly as she walked. She heard the other Agents exiting behind her moments later.
The hallway was vaguely cylindrical, opening into another lobby with a final identity confirmation. But if someone got this far, it was likely that all of the other security measures had failed against them already.
She always felt a little bit impatient about it.
Beyond the lobby the hallway widened into a much larger, rectangular room with access to different wings of the facility up or downstairs, plus further doors lining the halls and suspended walkways linking the offices above.
At the center of the room, surrounded by a ring of greenery, was the Monument of Humanity’s Future. As Arisa understood it, this was a fixture of every Branch, in one place or another. A tiered sculpture, tall and smooth, bearing Sefirot’s motto:
‘Fight for Humanity. Reach the Future.’
Of course, the containment wing was also accessible this way, though going there without being cleared ahead of time required an additional layer of security checks. The grey floor and the pale, near-white blue walls were marked only by the colored lines that indicated which wing was being approached.
Green for Research, Blue for the Offices, Yellow for Training, and Red for Containment.
Today, Arisa was expected to be on-duty, but hadn’t yet been briefed on any missions.
She supposed she could take advantage of the training room if she felt so inclined, or perhaps help oversee the Agents on containment duty. With her Malakim-level clearance, she was permitted to do so with most of the Anomalies contained in Branch-092.
Needless to say, she wasn’t aware that her plans would soon be changing.
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