Ink Stained

70: it's been too long*

Maybe.

Smart. Any who come searching for him will not think to look behind the cracks and glance at the shadows So Fu leaves in its wake.

She turns on her heel and goes over to the small machine, keeping a watchful eye on the Tanuki. He does not move at the sound of her walking about. He remains prone in his chair, hunched over; breathing – trying to – around the blood she can hear sloshing in his lungs, seeping in through the holes his broken ribs have punctured in them. Until they're fixed, reset in their places, the wounds won't heal.

She stares at the various buttons and circuits of the machine, all the plain colours and lines that meld together to create the power-source for electricity that will fry the Tanuki's nerves and muscles and body tissue if he tries to not say anything. All it will take is the slightest pressure to the red button clasped tight in her left hand, given to her by Yamato before he exited the room. In her right hand is a pad and pen, more to allude to her imagined status as an 'official agent' on 'official business' for an 'official governmental body' than anything else.

She lifts the paper, clicks the pen, and scribbles on it. She makes sure that she looks through the glasses at the paper.

オンになっていますか

"Yes, it is on." The voice crackles in again. "Press the button to activate the electric shock whenever it does not give you a satisfactory answer."

何が満足のいく答えとみなされますか

"A good answer from it will be anything to do with the contract it flew in from Okinawa to make with Fujikage Media House. What it says in response to your questions does not matter. We already have all the answers we need."

実際の尋問がない場合、なぜこれが起こるのですか

"It tried to escape yesterday. This is its punishment. Beyond that is none of your concern."

That explains his ribs, his lungs, the blood. She presses her lips tight together in irritation. They want and order her to kill and torture for them, yet they don't give her enough to go on, enough to know why she must do this. All she has on this Tanuki is his general information.

Name: Kahori Saeki

Race: Japanese, Tanuki

Age: thirty-two

Weight: seventy-eight kilograms

Height: one hundred and eighty-seven centimetres

Occupation: building contractor

Basic minimums that do not tell her what his role is in providing for his Clan, why and how he was captured, what connection he has with Fujikage Media House, and why any of it – why he – is important enough to So Fu that they found and took him in.

Because So Fu is not a world like Ayakashi are. There are not enough Agents to go around picking off any Hengen they meet on the streets. So Fu is smart – they go after those Hengen who matter, not low-level fish who barely make a ripple in the water.