Episode 15: THE CONCEALER | DURRUN by Aito Kitazaki

Episode 15

Yu-ri wakes on the MACHIDA pavement unsure which parts were real. Kikyou is down beside him and still breathing, Ten is intact, and he cannot explain either. Forty-five minutes earlier Ojiki had been dragging a fuel-dry Soujun along by the nose hair, waiting for the Dreamification to take hold before the last job of the night. In the morning MACHIDA is a hell nobody can account for: GEJI-GUMI men laid out in the street while residents and the Carabiner stare. Sergeant Komori asks his own people what happened last night and gets drink blamed for it; he half recognises the bodies and would very much like to be told he was not out with them. Usuzumi arrives sweating, loses his temper, then produces a pocket watch, and Komori’s manner reverses on the spot. What unsettles Usuzumi is the town: the wreckage he saw is gone, everything repaired except the GEJI-GUMI. Gen is convinced he broke his vow and slept in an alley. Kikyou tells him he never drank — and then hears Usuzumi describe a Fusebeast, its owner, and the night she cannot remember. Only she works out what happened, and who in TOKYO can do it. Ojiki confirms it from the other side: he hired the Time Child to turn a wrecked town and a cornered family into a dream, and explains a magic that rewrites a night around a chosen center of gravity. Then he names the fee. Three hundred million Lenny. Yu-ri says he will pay.