The first thing Jin Kusanagi remembered was the scent of damp cement and smoke.
The second was the pain.
It came in fits and starts, a steady throb in his left shoulder that intensified to white hot when he moved, a throb that radiated from his ribs that made breathing his own conscious decision, a low humming in his ears like a church bell someone had smacked too hard and left to ring.
He opened his eyes.
Neon pink. That was the first thing he could see. A billboard across the street, kanji that he couldn't quite make out, bloodied into the grey of early morning. He was sitting with his back against a wall, his legs stretched out on the filthy concrete and his jacket his jacket was open. The lining was out. He could see the photos.
He didn't close it.
He didn't know where he was.
That's not right, his heart told him. You should know where you are. You must know where you are.
But it wasn't a street he knew. The sign, advertising some type of pachinko place, perhaps, or a hostess bar, the ones with the frosted glass and never open curtains, was unfamiliar. The dark alley to his left could lead anywhere. The sky was that particular shade of grey you saw in Neo Tokyo at dawn or dusk or the Grief Mist, but he didn't know which.
He was patting his chest and his flanks and his pockets before he knew it. Camera. Camera was there, slung by the strap around his neck, the housing warm on his breastplate. Wallet. Empty, probably. Keys. Nothing he recognized. And a photo.
He pulled it out.
A girl. Eight or nine years old. Pigtails, a round face, a gap in her teeth. She was at a counter, wood, smooth, a counter that had been scrubbed a thousand times and had had a thousand bowls on it. Behind her a kitchen, and steam. She had her hands around a bowl larger than her head, and was looking at the camera like there was something she wanted to say.
He looked at her face.
He didn't know her.
That's not right either.
He turned the picture over. His own scrawl looked back at him, squashed and squiggled, the way people write when they have little time or daylight.
Remember this face.
He read the words three times. The fourth time, he choked and had to pause.
He slipped the photo into his jacket, into the inner lining which he'd stitched extra thick because the photos were the only things that couldn't be destroyed, and pushed himself to his feet. His left arm screamed. He ignored it. His ribs told him he didn't have to breathe. He breathed anyway.
The camera bounced off his chest. The pictures in his jacket jiggled. Forty three of them, he thought. Forty three faces. He could only remember half.
He started walking. He didn't know where he was going. His feet seemed to.
Twelve hours earlier.
The Lamenter was thirty feet of sobbing flesh and disparate appendages, a face cobbled together out of a dozen people who had died alone in this subway station and never left. It was a Class C when the Bureau first identified it, low return, low visibility, low importance. But Grief Mist had been collecting in Sector 9 for months and the tunnels hadn't been aired out and it had been hungry.
Now it was a Class B. Now it was someone's problem.
Now it was Jin's problem.
"You gonna smack it or are you just gonna look at it like that?" The tiles amplified Bakgo's voice, enough to wake the dead. Which, given their current circumstances, probably wasn't the best thing to say.
Jin didn't answer. He'd noticed the way the Lamenter moved, the way it (all six) shoulders bunched, the way it (main) head turned to pick up new heat sources, the way it (small) arms flexed in response to the change in heat. Common Wailing Pyre variant. Fire-type. Created from rotting grief.
He'd killed six of these. He could kill a seventh.
How much would it cost?
"Jin." Kaito's voice, soft and razor sharp, slicing through the Bakgo. "There are citizens on the platform. Exit three is cut. I can take out the eastern stairwell, but I need time."
"How much time?"
"Ninety seconds. Maybe less."
Jin nodded. Ninety seconds was forever. Ninety seconds was forever. "Get them out. Bakgo, you're with him."
"What? No. I'm not leaving you to
"You're leaving me to get punched. That's what I need." He stretched his neck, flexed his shoulders, felt the Impact Seals on his forearms get warm. "I'm low on power. I haven't really been hit since Tuesday."
Bakgo opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and I talk to myself."
"It works." Jin was already on the move, stepping around the blown ticket booth, moving to the Lamenter's line of sight. "GO."
The Lamenter saw him. Its main head, a woman's face, mid forties, eyes sunk in what was less death and more despair, swiveled. The minor heads turned, sighting heat, sighting motion, sighting the one person that wasn't trying to escape.
Jin raised his arms. Spread them. Smiled.
"Hit me," he said.
And it did.
The first blow broke three ribs on the left. The second a second hit that came from one of the appendages, quick and vicious broke his forearm. The third broke the ticket booth apart and punched him through the wall, concrete showering down on his shoulders and dust into his lungs.
He felt every impact. Not as pain, pain was something you felt when you weren't expecting it, but as weight. As potential. As weight building in the circuits in his arms, his shoulders, his back.
The Impact Seals began to glow, the red lines in his skin glowing like a thirsty man.
More, he thought. I need more.
The Lamenter was on the move, its sorrow ridden legs reaching for him, its mouths opening in a cry that would have frightened a normal mortal to death. Jin didn't hear it. He heard his heart, beating on, counting the joules. Fifty thousand. Eighty. One twenty.
One more.
He stepped into the attack.
The limb hit him in the chest. He heard his sternum crack, he heard his lungs squish, he felt the Impact Seals on his back go white hot as they took the impact of an automobile accident and sustained it.
He caught the Lamenter's arm, the limb that had just killed him, should have killed him, would have killed anyone else, and beamed.
"My turn."
He didn't swing. He opened his palm against the Lamenter's heart, and released.
The black fire burst out of his arm like a scream. It didn't burn it vaporised, the kinetic energy stored in his arm turning to heat so fierce that the air itself snapped and cracked, that the flooring beneath his feet cracked and crumbled, that the Lamenter's grief-shrunken flesh was vaporised before it could scream.
The subway station was bathed in sunlight for a second.
Then it was over.
Jin was alone at the bottom of a crater, his right arm at a menacing angle, his ribs on fire, his mind crackling. The Impact Seals were receding, the red lines turning to grey and an invisible door was slamming shut somewhere inside his mind.
He knew that door. He'd felt it close before.
What did I lose this time?
He couldn't answer. He never could. Not right away. The loss was negative space, a cavity, and he wouldn't know what it was until he tried to reach for it, to grasp it, and found his hand falling through air.
Bakgo was yelling. Kaito is saying something about a doctor. Jin ignored them both. Jin had a camera and it was still hanging around his neck, the case intact, he took a look at his last shot.
It was a girl. Pigtails. A gap between her front teeth. Eating her bowl of ramen like it was the best thing she'd ever had.
He looked at her face. He knew her. He knew she was Rina, he knew she drew in a notebook, he knew she'd been sleeping in the room upstairs for six months, he knew she was the reason his jacket had forty-three photos instead of forty-two.
He knew all of that.
But he didn't feel it.
It's the difference, he thought, stowing his camera. Knowing and feeling. I love her. I know I love them all. I just can't feel it.
He headed for the exit. Bakgo ran to him, still screaming. Kaito was already moving on ahead. He walked beside Bakgo and Kaito like a three part animal, Bakgo the voice, Kaito the fangs, Jin the heart.
He didn't look at the crater.
Two blocks from the station was the ramen shop, between the love hotel and the pachinko parlor that had been out of business so long the sign had turned to a single pink blob. The shop's sign was faded kanji that read "Kurogane's Golden Broth", and unless you were looking for it, you would walk past it as many as a dozen times.
Jin had walked past it a dozen times. He'd walked past it every day of his life. It wasn't until Pops found him in the gutter, bleeding to death 17 years old, alone and with only a camera and a bag full of pictures that he'd stopped walking and sat down.
The bell above the door chimed.
Pops was sitting behind the counter, his sleeves rolled up to his forearms, a smoke dangling from his lips. He looked at Jin's arm, his ribs, his newly burned fists. He looked at the camera, still around Jin's neck.
He didn't ask questions.
He pushed a bowl towards him. "The girl's fine. She's upstairs."
Jin sat. The soup was tonkotsu, the pork belly was thick and fat, the egg perfect. This recipe was thirty years old. He'd been making it before the Bureau, before the Grief-Mist, before. It was like something from before the advent of interest.
Jin ate. He couldn't remember being hungry. He had always been hungry.
"The girl," he said, on the third bite. "I don't" He couldn't complete the sentence.
Pops inhaled from his cigarette. Exhaled. It wafted up to the ceiling, grey on grey. "Last week you took a photo of her. You said you'd wanted to remember her face."
Jin felt for his jacket. He took out the photo he'd taken it, he'd scrawled his words on the back and looked at it.
Remember this face.
He'd written that. He'd photographed it. He'd sewn it to his jacket with the other faces, 43 people he should never forget.
He looked up at Pops. "How many am I supposed to remember?"
Pops didn't answer. He reached over the counter, and plucked something out of Jin's jacket, an older photo this time, the corners worn. In it, a boy, 17 years old, stood in front of the same counter, eating a bowl of ramen, and looking like he was the happiest kid in the world.
And in a less rushed scrawl below it: "First meal. First memory. The first one."
Jin looked at it. He remembered taking this photo. He remembered Bakgo commenting on the lighting, and Kaito saying that he didn't care, and Yuna saying that it would be too salty (it wasn't), and Rina laughing at something that he didn't remember.
He remembered the shape of the memory. The warmth was gone.
"The girl," he said again. "What's her name?"
Pops took the boy's picture and slipped it back in Jin's jacket. "She's coming down now. Ask her yourself."
The stairs creaked.
She was small, perhaps not as small as the picture. Pigtails, round face, a cloud clip, white once and now mostly grey. She had an apron on, tied twice and hanging out the bottom.
She studied Jin's arm, his rib cage, the new scarring on his face he hadn't noticed before.
"You forgot again, didn't you?"
Jin didn't answer. He didn't know what to say. He didn't know how to tell her that it wasn't forget. He remembered her. He remembered that her name was Rina. He remembered it was six months ago that she'd visited the shop, that she drew in a notebook, that because of her, his jacket had forty three photos stuck to it, not just forty two.
He just couldn't remember why he cared.
She had a spiral bound notebook, big, with stickers stuck and restuck so many times they were starting to come off, and turned it open. She drew in neat rounded letters, in neat straight lines.
"My name is Rina Amano," she read. "You helped me when a Lamenter killed my parents. You brought me here. I draw you in my book to remind you when the photographs don't work."
She looked up at him. Her eyes were brown, very dark. "I'm on page fourteen. You're on page fourteen. I drew you eating ramen. It's not very good. I'm learning."
Jin looked at the notebook. At the drawing of a bowl eating boy, with crazy hair and a camera on a counter. It wasn't very good. The proportions were off, the perspective was off, and the boy's face was off he'd captured everything about the boy except something that was still eluding him.
He took out his camera. She looked at him, a little startled. She cradled the book to her chest, the paper side out, and looked at him with those dark, unwavering eyes.
The shutter clicked.
He snapped the photo, still wet, still developing, and scrawled on the back in his scrabbling handwriting.
Rina Amano. She draws so I remember.
He stowed it in his coat, with the rest, and counted again.
Forty-four photos now. He knew the faces of twenty eight. Sixteen were strangers. He wasn't sure if that was more or less than last week.
She sat down beside him. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She took her sketchpad and began drawing, her little hands furiously working the paper with concentration, and he suddenly remembered something.
Pops served up another bowl. Jin ate it. The broth was warm. The girl drew. The pictures in his jacket crunched when he moved.
Tonight he didn't know what he'd forgotten. He'd know, most likely, tomorrow, when he reached for something and didn't find it. He'd reach for the feel of the first week at the shop, or Bakgo's laugh, or the way Rina called his name when she thought he couldn't hear, and he'd find the shape and the facts and the dates and the names but nothing else.
He'd find nothing else, and he'd walk away from it, and he'd take more pictures, and he'd write more names, and he'd get the jacket so full he would have to wear it with his arms out to the sides.
That was the plan. It had always been the plan.
He took another bite. The broth was good. It was always good.
The girl drew. Pops smoked. The city buzzed outside and its grief mist swirled, its debt grew and its motor sang on the blood of all he couldn't lose.
Jin ate his ramen.
He didn't know what he'd lost.
He'd find out tomorrow.
AUTHOR'S END NOTE
Hey everyone! Welcome to Karmic Debt.
If this is your first time: this is a tale of the cost of power, the loss of memory and the friends who hold each other close when the world wants money.
Jin's power, Karmic Debt, allows him to gather the force of his blows and unleash it as black flames. The catch? Each time he lands his finishing manoeuvre (Karmic Collapse), he loses his best memories. Not random ones. The good ones. The ones that make him human.
He takes photos. He writes names on the back. He sews them to his jacket so that when he wakes up one day and doesn't remember the faces of the people he loves, he at least knows that he did love them.
This chapter is supposed to show three things: the price he pays for his power, the price he pays for his loss and the structure of the family he has created regardless.
Rina is eight. She draws. She doesn't have powers. She's the only character who can fight without a cost. I'm not saying that it will. I'm not saying it's not.
We shall see.
If you liked this, please leave a comment or review. Feedback is the lifeblood of serial fiction, so I would love to hear your thoughts on what worked, what didn't, what you would like to see.
Next : Kaito goes on a mission. Nine year old girl in a white room. A dad who wanted her dead. And the perfect weapon that can refuse to kill.
See you next time.
The Author
P.S. The photo count is important. I'm keeping track. So should you.