Romantic Warrior (Part 1)

The story of Boogiepop is one that weighs heavily upon me. It's a subject that I still haven't finished sorting out my feelings about.

He's no longer around, but I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to feel relieved about that fact or not.

He was... Unusual, to say the least.

I'd never meat anyone as strange as him in the seventeen years that I've been alive, and I doubt I ever will again.

After all, he was a transforming super-hero.

That sort of thing is only fun if they're on TV. If you're standing right next to one, it causes nothing but trouble. And, in my case, it wasn't exactly someone else's problem.

I never once saw him smile.

He always looked grim, and would look at me and say depressing things like, "Takeda-kun, this world is filled with flaws." This, with the exact same pretty face that always made my head reel.

But Boogiepop is gone now.

I'll never know if everything he told me was a lie or not.

◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆

One Sunday, with the middle of fall fast approaching, I was standing in front of the station, waiting for my girlfriend, Miyashita Touka. We were supposed to meet at eleven, but it was already three o'clock, and she had yet to appear.

Did I mention she was a year younger than me?

Apparently, her family was pretty strict, and for some stupid reason, I was expressly forbidden from even attempting to call her house. All I could ever do was simply wait for her to get in contact with me. So, once again, I was forced to stand there fretting while I patiently tried to wait for her to show.

"Hey, Takeda-senpai!" someone called out.

I turned around to find Saotome standing there. He was my kouhai, on the same committee as I was. There were three other students with him, two of them girls.

"What's this, a double date?" I said, aware that I was coming off as old-fashioned.

"Something like that. You waiting for yours?"

Saotome gave off pretty much the same impression whether in uniform or out. Wherever he was, he seemed to blend in.

"You do realize that dating's against school rules, right?" Saotome said.

"Look who's talking."

"Oh, you're on the discipline committee as well?" the guy next to Saotome asked.

"Oh, yeah, sorry,' I thought... But I couldn't say that to a junior, so I just shrugged.

"Then I guess we've got nothing to wrroy about," he said, putting his arm around the shoulders of the girl next to him.

Guess they were together. Go figure.

"Yeah, I don't give a damn either, but the teachers are a different matter. Better keep an eye out so they don't catch you," I grumbled.

They all gave knowing laughs, then nodded and took their leave. As they walked off, I heard one of the girls say, "Guess who's been dumped!"

All I could think was, 'Mind your own damn business!'

I mean, it's not that I actually like being on the discipline committee. It's just that someone's had to take the job and that someone ended up being me.

That day, Touka never did show.

(Have I really been dumped? Surely there would have been some sort of warning, right?)

I waited despondently until five, unable to let things go. I knew I had to, though.

I dragged myself away, feeling like the world had cast me aside. I was the only person in my class not going to college. Heck, everyone else was off studying for entrance exams. It's not wonder I felt so left out.

Then it happened.

Staggering towards me was the kind of guy who would stand out in any crowd.

He was a skinny young man, with roughly cropped hair that stood no end. He wore a badly torn, dirty white shirt that was just flung over his body. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving his bare chest exposed. The bottoms of his pants trailed along the ground as his shoeless bare feet shuffled across the pavement.

There was serious looking wound on his head, and half his face was covered in blood. Though mostly dried, the blood stuck to his hair was in clumps. One look at him, and I knew he was a mess, yet I couldn't avert my gaze.

His eyes were unfocused, and he was moaning aloud. This was not some new fashion, but clearly a bona fide, genuinely crazy psychopath. Probably on drugs.

(Yeesh, there are actually guys like this showing up in our town now too...?)

Spooked, I averted my course, giving him a wide berth.

Everyone else was doing the same, so there was sort of air pocket forming around him.

He tottered along in the center for a few moments.

Then, suddenly, he collapsed to the ground.

Before anyone could react, he began to sob quietly.

"Enhhh... Enhhhhh..." he sniveled. "Unngghhhhh."

Great, slobby tears rolled down his cheeks, heedless of his surroundings.

A circle of people - myself among them - formed around him, watching. None of us dared move towards him.

It was the strangest thing that I'd ever seen.

It was bizarre, like something out of a surreal Eastern Europian movie.

But there was one person who did approach him.

He was shorter than me and dressed in a long, black cape with a collar that wrapped around him like a great coat, and a black hat like a shrunken pipe or a top hat without a brim. The hat was a size too big for his head, and half-covered his eyes.

On the hat and cape were gleaming bits of metal, like rivets or some sort of badge, sewn along the hem. It gave off the impression of armor.

To match his all-black outfit, he wore black lipstick. His face was so white; it was like the ink painted on top of a glossy Noh mask.

Clearly, this was another crazy person on the loose.

The cloaked figure leaned his black hat over to the side, and whispered in the psycho's ear.

The psycho stared up at the cloaked figure with empty eyes.

"..."

The man nodded and the psycho stopped crying.

There was a slight stir from the crowd around them. It seemed that some form of silent communication had been established.

The cloaked figure's face snapped up and glared around at us. It was clear that he was seething with anger.

"Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!" he suddenly shouted, loud and angry, in a clear, boyish soprano voice. "Is this what the advancement of civilization has lead to?! Urban life weeding out and killing the weak?! It's appalling!"

The crowd concluded that he was simply another loony and avoided eye contact, quickly dispersing. I started to follow suit, but he spun towards me, catching my eye. It was then that I finally got a clear look at his face.

Words can't begin to do justice to the shock I fell at that moment.

Perhaps the best example I can give is to describe it like one of those nopperabou ghost stories - a faceless ghost, where you expect it to have no face, but instead, it looks just like you. At first you just don't get it, but you do, and it totally freaks you out.

I stared at him, eyes wide open and mouth agape.

But for him, I seemed to be little more than another face in the crowd, and he soon shifted his glare to the man next to me.

Two policeman came rushing up. At last, someone had reported the psycho.

"That him?"

"Get up!"

The policeman roughly tried to yank the man to his feet.

He made no attempt to resist.

"No need to be so violent. He's afraid," the black-hatted figure said, not fazed by the idea of lecturing policeman either.

"What are you? His family?"

"Just passing by," the figure replied softly. "Don't twist his arm like that!"

"Step aside!" the policeman shouted, as another tried to shove the cloaked figure away.

But the cloaked figure bent his body like a dancer, and evaded the policeman's sweaty arm.

"Wah!" the policeman cried, overbalancing and falling to his knees.

It was like some kind of kung fu or mayb tai chi. All I know is that the cloaked figure's motions came off as being extremely graceful and fluid.

"This is what happens when you resort to violence," the cloaked figure spat.

"And that's what I call interfering with a police officer!" the cop bellowed, springing to his feet.

"Try performing your duty before you accuse me of interfering with it. It is your job to save people who are in trouble, not to trample them beneath your feet," the cloaked figure said, as if delivering a speech.

Meanwhile, the police had forgotten about the psycho, who had begun aimlessly tottering off down the street again with surprising speed.

The policeman turned hurriedly to give chase, shouting, "Hey, you! Stop right there!"

The cloaked figure in the black hat spun around, his cape fluttering, and dashed away.

"Ah! Wait!" The policeman clearly couldn't decide which quarry to chase.

The cloaked figure moved like the wind, and vanished just as quickly around the next corner.

I was left standing there, stunned.

I was not stunned because of the cloaked figure's bizarre behavior. Well, maybe I was, but much more shocking was having the image of his face burned into my eyes. The hat was low on his face and partially concealed it, but there was no mistaking those big, almond-shaped eyes... They belong to the girl that I had been waiting for all - Miyashita Touka!

And thus, ended my first encounter with the mysterious cloaked figure - Boogiepop.