Comeuppance
Once again, the backroom of Morinaga Videos. Stacks of VHS tapes, Kenji’s camera gear sprawled across every available surface like a nest of chrome-limbed spiders. The TV which was built at least a decade before any of them were born.
The back door slammed open hard enough to jolt dust from the fluorescents.
Kentaro kicked it open with the heel of his boot.
He swaggered in, helmet under his arm. His grin was already plastered in place, loud enough to fill the whole room even before he spoke. He looked like he’d walked straight out of a delinquent OVA.
“Well, well, well,” he said, tossing the helmet on a couch. “Look at the other half of our sad little coven. Still sittin’ on your ass, huh?”
Kenji strode forward behind the delinquent. Rin, seated on a filing cabinet with her knees pulled up, didn’t bother responding and just looked up.
“Gotta say, Spielberg,” he said, jerking a thumb at Kenji.
“So,” he barked, kicking the door shut with his heel. “Spielberg and I have been busting our asses all week, and what do I hear?”
He slapped his palm loudly against a stack of empty VHS cases.
“You two haven’t done jack.”
Kenji was halfway through adjusting his tripod; he jolted and nearly dropped it.
“I mean, you could at least call me by my name sometime,” he muttered, offended but also secretly flattered.
Kentaro ignored him and pointed at Itsurō with his chin.
“I’m serious. Me and the little director fought our way through the Fujiwara Senki—”
Kenji immediately perked up. “The shot composition was beautiful, actually—”
“—and got that midget biker gang to fold,” Kentaro continued, louder, drowning him out. “We did our damn homework. Meanwhile you two? Nothing. Nada. Zip.”
Rin braced.
She expected Itsurō to snap. Or mock him. Or drop one of those sociopathic philosophical monologues.
“Well,” he said lightly, “fair enough. You did good work.”
Kentaro blinked, thrown off. “Huh?”
“Really,” Itsurō continued, closing the notebook he’d been scribbling in. His hand was bandaged, but he didn’t fuss with it. “The info you got us on the Fujiwara Senki was pretty good. And getting that gang of midgets under pressure gives us a lot more options.”
He leaned back in the folding chair.
“And we’re about to get our part done on this side.”
Rin blinked sharply.
She’d expected chaos. Argument. Tension.
Not… smooth agreement?
Kentaro crossed his arms. “You’re actually finally doing something? Like, as in today?”
Itsurō nodded, completely amicable.
Kenji punched the air. “FINALLY! Progress! Development! Rising action!”
“Calm down,” Itsurō said with the tone of someone gently herding an overstimulated animal. “There’s no need to overhype.”
Rin stared between them.
“…Wait,” she said. “So nothing went wrong? You’re not arguing? We’re just—actually moving forward?”
Itsurō turned to her with that same unhurried composure.
“Correct. Kentaro and Kenji did their part. Now we do ours.”
Kentaro smirked, satisfied. “Hell yeah. That’s what I like to hear. I was starting to think you’d gotten cold feet.”
Kenji clicked his camera on, immediately circling them.
“This is perfect. Perfect! The pacing is immaculate. First conflict, rising tension, now the antagonists take initiative—”
“We’re not— Don't call us that,” Rin muttered.
Kenji zoomed in on her face. “Tell that to the narrative.”
Rin smacked the lens away.
Itsurō tapped a fingertip against the battered metal table.
Then with the same motion someone would use to flick lint off a sleeve he gestured toward the corner of the room.
“But first things first. Look at this mess.”
Rin followed his line of sight first.
Her ritual bundle sat half-hidden under a pile of old VHS tapes: chalk sticks, incense, talismans, a brass dish still stained with wax. Things she always tried to keep organized, now scattered like props after a failed stage rehearsal, as Kenji would say.
Next to it lay Kentaro’s cigarette packets, empty and flattened, and—
“Hey,” Kentaro frowned, leaning in. “Is that my jacket?”
He shrugged. “Damn, I've been looking for it for days.”
Itsurō gave him a thin, humorless smile.
“Exactly.”
He swept a hand across the entire table, the candles Rin forgot to put away, a misplaced spool of film Kenji had left, the motorcycle gloves Kentaro had thrown down casually last week, even one of Itsurō’s own notebooks with scribbled tactical drafts.
“All of this,” Itsurō said calmly, “is evidence.”
Kenji froze mid-sip of canned coffee.
Rin stared at his theatric gestures, long gone the days where she'd cringe at him.
Kentaro scratched his cheek, unimpressed. “Relax, nobody comes back here except Spielberg and his boss.”
“That’s not the point.” Itsurō’s voice softened, which somehow made it more imposing. “We’ve met here too many times. Left too many traces. When something goes wrong, and it will, it only takes one mildly perceptive person (rare as they might be) rummaging through the wrong stack of tapes or seeing us gather here regularly to connect us.”
He nudged Rin’s chalk with his foot.
It rolled, leaving a faint white streak on the dusty floor.
“Rin’s esoterica. Kentaro’s... habits. Kenji’s equipment. All piled together like a confession letter.”
Kenji blinked. “It is kind of cinematic, though. Like the cops busting into a cult’s hideout—”
“Kenji,” Itsurō said flatly. “Not helping.”
Rin muttered, “It’s not like we are a cult anyway,” but even she didn’t sound convinced.
Then Itsurō straightened, brushing nonexistent dust off his sleeves.
“Which is why,” he continued, tone unfailingly courteous, “I’ve already secured us somewhere better.”
All three looked up.
“Allow me to make a correction regarding our arranged meeting location. Instead of this place, or the karaoke one, we'll use the one I procured from now on. A real meeting place,” Itsurō explained. “No customers. No staff. No accidental visitors. No shared connections. Somewhere that can't be traced back to any of us, even if someone did start sniffing around.”
Kenji’s brows shot up. “Wait—so you didn’t just sit around while Kentaro and I worked?”
Itsurō’s smile sharpened at the edges.
“I was laying groundwork.”
Kentaro gave a low whistle. “Damn. And here I was thinking you were just slacking.”
“Next time,” he said, quiet but unmistakably firm, “we meet where no one knows us, no one watches us, and nothing accidental gets tied to our names.”
Kentaro’s engine snarled through the narrowing road, one of those half-forgotten arteries of Kageoka that only led to the outskirts beyond the industrial ruins, old service tunnels, and dead ends no one bothered policing. Exactly the kind of place Itsurō loved: quiet, unseen, erased from everyone’s mental map.
The evening sun cut long orange bars under the overpass ahead.
Kentaro lifted his chin.
The new hideout wasn’t far from the city center, but it felt like stepping outside the world.
He revved the throttle.
The bike thundered under the overpass—
—and then the world dropped a brick on him.
Literally.
A gray cinder block fell from overhead like a stone guillotine, too sudden to dodge, too close to react. It slammed directly into the front of his helmet with the blunt WHUDK of dense concrete striking polycarbonate.
The block smashed into him like a meteor, snapping his head back. The bike swerved violently, fishtailed, then collided with the guardrail. His body flew forward, bounced off the handlebars, and hit pavement hard enough to scrape sparks off his jacket.
The bike clattered into the concrete barrier and skidded into silence.
Kentaro rolled once. Twice. Came to a stop half on his back, half twisted onto his side, gasping.
Everything rang.
His ears. His skull.
His vision pulsed in and out, a flickering static haze behind the cracked visor.
“…the… fuck…”
He lifted a hand—pain spiked all the way up his arm.
The block that hit him lay a bit far from him, chipped at the corners from impact.
Kentaro’s first breath after forcing himself upright was fire. Not poetic, not metaphorical—literal fire.
A glass bottle arced down from above with a hiss of igniting cloth. It burst across his shoulder and chest in a blossom of gasoline flame.
The woosh enveloped him.
“GAH—FUCK!!”
Kentaro dropped instantly, instincts older than thought taking over. He hit the pavement and rolled, hard, abrasive asphalt ripping at his skin through his clothes. Heat bloomed along his arm and the side of his neck; hair singed, skin blistered.
He tore at his jacket, fingers slipping on the scorched fabric until he ripped it free and flung it aside where it continued burning in a ditch, orange tongues licking upward.
He was panting, adrenaline spiking, but he forced his head up.
And saw the second one.
At the top of the embankment, the attacker was already lighting another Molotov. Wearing a baggy jumpsuit. Thick boots. A cap hid most of their face.
Kentaro staggered back onto his feet.
“You—fucking—piece of SHIT!” he roared, voice hoarse.
The attacker didn’t answer and just threw the bottle.
Kentaro dove barely. The second bottle exploded against the ground inches from his ribs. A wave of heat kicked him sideways. Shards of glass peppered his skin. Flames crawled across the pavement in creeping tendrils.
Kentaro stumbled to his knees, coughing, eyes watering but locked onto the figure above.
The jumpsuit hid everything. Same with the cap pulled low. No hair visible. No face, no silhouette he could decipher.
He spat another mouthful of blood, wiped his face, and gritted his teeth.
“Oh, so that’s it? You wanna finish the job?” he snarled. “You think you can take me out like some dog in the street?!”
His voice shredded into a ragged scream.
“COME ON THEN! I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!”
He squared up and actually managed to get a better look at his attacker.
The jumpsuit was generic. Cheap. Disposable. Boots scuffed. Wearing gloves. The cap shadowed everything above the nose… but Kentaro’s eyes widened before he could stop himself.
Not at anything visible.
But at the shape.
And the size.
The proportions were wrong for a man.
Too curvy. Too narrow-waisted. Too full.
Too… feminine.
Kentaro blinked hard.
“…a woman?”
The only response was the soft clink of a third glass bottle being unwrapped from the bag slung at her side.
As the flame from the lighter flared, illuminating just a sliver under the brim of the cap, Kentaro saw a pair of eyes.
Dark. Sunken. Glassy and unblinking.
He had seen her before, on the target list.
That bitch, always watching that retard Shu Jinkō walk by like he was the sun itself.
“…Suishi…?”
Kentaro crashed through the brush like a wounded boar, lungs burning, vision swimming from smoke and pain. He dove into the treeline beside the overpass, branches whipping him, thorns catching on his shirt as he forced himself deeper and deeper into the dark.
Behind him, the road roared with flame, ahead of him, only shadows.
He pressed his back to a trunk and looked at his hands.
Swollen. Burned. One knuckle split. Skin blistered.
“Dammit… Fuck—!”
He couldn’t fight like this. Not even close. But he didn’t have to wait either.
His breath came fast and ragged as he slammed his fist into the tree.
CRACK.
Not a clean hit. His joints screamed. But the bark split. Sap burst.
And Kentaro grinned.
“Good… good…”
He pivoted, drove his knee into the trunk.
CRACK.
Another wound opening on something that wasn’t him.
Relief, small, but undoubtedly consistent, rippled under his skin. The ache in his fingers dulled. The burn along his shoulder receded a fraction.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He hit trees until his knuckles bled over fresh bark. He stomped the undergrowth, crushing beetles, worms, anything that crawled.
Kicked apart a rotting log, smashing the pale bugs beneath.
Swatted a lizard off a rock and ground it under his heel.
Each act sent a faint pulse through him like warm soothing breath blowing across his wounds. Tiny, incremental healing, barely noticeable on its own, but it was something.
“Come on… come on…” he whispered, eyes darting through the branches.
“I need more…”
Then he saw it. A small bird perched on a low branch, trembling in the night air.
Kentaro grabbed a fist-sized stone. Weighed it.
Aimed.
THOK.
The flailing wings gave out.
The bird toppled, crashing into the dirt with a broken chirp.
It writhed. One wing twisted wrong. It couldn’t fly.
Barely moved.
Perfect.
Kentaro crouched over it, breathing hard. His shadow fell across the tiny thing. Its beak opened and closed in little panicked gasps.
He reached for it—
SNAP.
The healing flowed a bit better this time, like electricity racing under his skin, forcing burned tissue to recover and tendons to tighten. Pain evaporated up his arm and left clarity in its wake. However, he wasn't sure about the full extent of his injuries. For all he knew he could have a concussion.
No time to think.
One moment Kentaro was backing away from the dead bird, the next, something slammed into the side of his skull with a metallic CLANG that rang like a cracked bell.
A hammer.
She hit him with a fucking hammer.
Most people would’ve gone down and stayed down, twitching in the dirt.
Kentaro staggered sideways, vision exploding white. His ear buzzed.
His balance was messed up.
But he didn’t fall.
His hand shot out, wild but fast, catching Ai’s wrist before she could strike again.
“You— crazy— bitch—”
He yanked her toward him, fist already winding up.
He threw the first punch into her cheek, the second into her jaw.
Both solid hits.
Both should have ended this. He knew. It wasn't his first time hitting a woman like that.
Ai barely reacted.
Her head snapped with the blows, hair whipping across her face, body folding with the force—
but she didn’t make a sound.
Not pain.
Not fear.
No sound at all.
Then her hand slipped under his guard, fast as a snake striking, and she jammed her knuckles right into his throat.
Kentaro choked, his windpipe spasming.
He let go of her wrist out of reflex, instinctively clutching his neck—
Ai moved the moment his grip loosened.
Her fingers darted toward his eyes.
Kentaro jerked his head aside, feeling the air of her nails skim past his lashes. He threw himself backward, stumbling, and her hand sliced the space where his vision had been.
It wasn’t enough distance.
Ai slid low, almost on all fours now, slipping away from him with disjointed, inhuman agility.
Kentaro regained footing, coughed hard, spat blood, and got his hands up—
But Ai was already gone.
Kentaro felt the burns in his forearm heal and the pain on his forehead fade after hitting Ai. A warm, crawling numbness traveled up into his shoulder—the familiar, filthy rush of stolen vitality— and he flexed his fingers once, twice.
Good. The ringing in his ears was gone too.
He wasn’t going to get ambushed a third time.
Branches whispered overhead, too soft for wind. He turned sharply.
Ai came out of the dark like a thrown knife.
A glint of metal, another swing of the hammer, but Kentaro saw it this time. He ducked, the steel brushing his hair.
The second attack, a jab toward his ribs, landed, but now he could take it.
His counterpunch caught her cheek clean this time, snapping her head sideways.
Her cap flew off, hair spilling down in a black sheet.
“Got you now—!”
He lunged, grabbed a fistful of that hair, and hauled her upward. She barely weighed anything to him but her body felt wiry and tense, like a coiled trap that hadn’t sprung yet.
He slammed her back into a tree trunk. The crack echoed, bark splintering.
Ai didn’t scream.
Her face twitched once, whether from rage or something else, and then Kentaro’s fists drove into her stomach, ribs, shoulder.
Each hit made his injuries knit further closed.
A grotesque cycle, his brutality feeding his recovery, his recovery feeding more brutality.
“Come on,” he snarled, slamming her again, “come on, crazy whore— you wanted a fight, right?!”
Her eyes met his, glassy, ecstatic, unblinking.
Then her hand twitched.
Just three quick taps, wrist, inner elbow, shoulder—
Pressure points.
Kentaro’s entire right arm went dead.
His grip faltered. Ai twisted, slipped right out of his grasp, and hit the ground catlike. When Kentaro looked at his hand, only a torn handful of her strands remained.
She struck the side of his body a few times.
“You—little—!”
But she was already gone again, melting into the underbrush.
Kentaro flexed his arm, trying to fight through the numbness.
He kept to the treeline, one hand pressed against his ribs, the other flexing and unflexing as sensation slowly crawled back into it.
He was angling toward the roadside now. His jacket was still lying somewhere near the shattered bottle and the scorch marks.
And inside the jacket—
The gun.
One clean shot, even with numb hands, would end this insanity.
He took a step.
A second.
A third.
Then far behind a tree trunk’s shadow something shifted.
Ai was crouched low, almost folded into herself like a marionette with its strings cut… and in her hands were two small ziplock bags.
Kentaro squinted.
Hair?
Why the hell—
Ai tore the first bag open with her teeth.
She tipped her head back, almost reverent, and dumped the contents into her mouth.
At first, nothing.
Then her whole body shuddered— a slow, trembling inhale, like she’d just tasted oxygen after drowning.
Her spine straightened one vertebra at a time. Her fingers uncurled with a faint, delighted tremor. Her pupils dilated so wide the whites nearly vanished, swallowing the dim light whole.
“The hell… did you just eat?”
Ai wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing dirt and blood across her cheek. Her breath came out shaky, almost euphoric, and she whispered something he couldn’t quite catch.
It sounded like a name. He could guess which one.
Ai lunged again.
He spun, swinging his arm wide in a reflexive backhand and she caught it.
Ai Suishi— the trembling weirdo who everyone bullied— caught his full-force swing with both hands and held it still.
Her fingers dug into his forearm like claws. Knuckles white.
Tendons standing out.
Her veins were bulging, dark, almost bruised, running up her arms like something was burning through them from inside.
Her face was the real nightmare.
Her nose was bleeding and she was drooling, thick strands of saliva hanging off her chin. Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing her irises entirely.
And she was smiling.
A stretched, shaking, ecstatic smile.
“Why,” she whispered—voice cracking—“are you even breathing the same air as him?”
Kentaro yanked his arm back on instinct, but she didn’t budge at first. nIt was like pulling against a rabid animal locked into a frenzy—no technique, no leverage, just impossible, frantic strength.
Then she let go only to slam her forehead into his nose.
Kentaro staggered back, swearing, feeling the warm gush of blood flood down his lips.
He threw a punch—instinct, anger, necessity—
She wasn't able to dodge.
The sound was awful—bone on bone, a crack that vibrated up his arm.
Ai’s head snapped sideways— And then she turned right back toward him.
Smile widening.
Blood running freely now, dripping off her jaw.
“K–Kentaro Tachibana…” she giggled, voice broken and airy.
“You… hurt him. You… touched him.” Her body lurched as she spoke. “You—stupid—filthy—thing. You dare. You dare.”
Kentaro wiped his nose, glaring.
“Woman, you’re outta—”
Ai lunged at him again.
He blocked, and she didn’t flinch.
Her knee drove into his ribs, hard enough to rattle him. He retaliated, gut punch, elbow, knee, every strike he landed made her jerk and spasm and bleed—
Every hit he landed should’ve put her down.
Should’ve made her fold.
Should’ve slowed her.
Kentaro grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against a tree again. He felt her windpipe strain under his grip and her nails dig into his wrist.
He felt the familiar surge, that little electric kick his power gave him whenever he hurt someone.
Good.
He’d heal.
She’d break.
She leaned forward, even took a stumbling step forward—
then another—
and another— Until she managed to free herself from his grasp, pushing him back.
Ai’s breathing hitched, hysterical and reverent all at once:
“He saved me… He saved me… He looked at me… He—he’s holy. Do you understand?!” She shrieked suddenly, saliva flying. “DO YOU? YOU FILTHY, UGLY, USELESS MUTT— HOW DARE YOU LAY A HAND ON HIS SACRED, BEAUTIFUL—”
With a swing of her hand Ai threw her own blood at his eyes, blinding him for a few precious seconds.
When he managed to regain his vision, Kentaro saw the glow before he heard the glass.
Another Molotov. The fourth? Fifth? Did this psycho have an unlimited supply stuffed into that jumpsuit?!
“Give me a break!”
He dove to the side, heat licking his arm as the bottle shattered and fire whooshed up the dry brush behind him. The flames were spreading fast, crackling, hissing, devouring everything in uneven bursts.
Kentaro spat, eyes stinging.
“She’s outta her damn mind,” he growled, voice hoarse, throat raw. “Act like a crazy bitch all you want… I’m puttin’ you down like one.”
He sprinted toward the road. Open ground. Light. Distance.
Anything was better than being boxed in by trees and fire with some deranged freak stalking him like a rabid animal.
He burst past the last line of underbrush—
And something snatched his throat.
A thin snap of twine—no, maybe cloth— he never saw it, just felt the violent constriction slam around his neck.
“H—GKH—!”
Kentaro was yanked backward with brutal force.
He collided back-first into a tree trunk. Hard. The impact knocked the breath out of him— and the cloth tightened.
It wasn’t just around his neck— it was braced around the tree.
A garrote improvised from… from something he couldn’t see. A sash?
A strip of fabric? Did she tear it from her own clothes?
He clawed at it, fingers digging between the layers, but she held onto it, using the trunk as leverage.
“Fuck—!” he choked out, desperate fury replacing breath. “You—crazy—!”
That crazy woman was really going to do it. Arms hooked around, body anchored, legs braced, using every ounce of her insane strength.
Kentaro slammed his heel into the tree, trying to pivot, trying to break the choke. The cloth dug into his neck.
Stars flickered in his sight.
The fire behind him roared higher, the heat intensifying and the choking force got worse.
For one miraculous instant, his boot wedged against just the right angle of root, the choke loosened by half a breath and Kentaro exploded upward with everything left in him.
The tree groaned— Then ripped out of the earth.
Ai’s strangling cloth was still looped around his neck and more importantly around the trunk, her body braced behind it, so when the whole thing came free, her leverage shattered instantly. Kentaro threw himself backward with the falling trunk letting gravity and his weight do the work.
The uprooted tree and him crashed down directly on top of Ai.
A scream tore out of her, high, warped, and animalistic. A sound too full of pain and obsession to be human.
Kentaro didn’t wait. He bolted.
Through burning brush, stumbling over roots, clawing toward open ground until his boots slapped pavement.
The road. Fucking finally.
“Hah—hah—hah—fuck—”
He doubled over, coughing, sucking down air through a bruised, half-crushed throat. Smoke stung his eyes.
And behind him the fire was spreading fast.
The forest line was already a wall of orange teeth gnawing upward. Sirens were inevitable.
People would be here soon.
He needed to grab his jacket, needed his gun, needed to get the hell out.
"So much to do... Fuck."
Kentaro staggered toward the crumpled jacket lying on the asphalt. Dug through the pockets—
Then froze.
Screaming.
Somewhere past the burning trees a sound cut through the roar of flames.
A tearing, broken screech. Like someone coughing up their lungs in absolute despair.
Ai had gotten the tree off her and she was coming.
Kentaro spun, gun now in hand, breath shredding in his throat.
Through the inferno, past the falling embers, that silhouette.
Unsteady. Smoldering around the edges. Hair hanging in ragged black sheets. Her jumpsuit half-singed. Blood from her forehead mixing with soot.
Eyes wide, unfocused, and burning with single-minded, rabid devotion.
She staggered forward.
Dragging one leg.
Steam hissing around her where sweat burned off her skin.
Kentaro didn’t hesitate.
He raised the gun.
And fired.
BANG.
She jerked. Stumbled. A red spray misted through the firelight.
BANG.
Ai collapsed to her knees.
Her body swayed.
And then she tipped forward, disappearing into the burning brush, the flames curling around her like hungry hands.
He wasn’t sure where he’d hit, the distance made it hard to say, but the way she fell…
Yeah.
That bitch was done.
“Shit,” he rasped, grabbing the bike’s handlebars, forcing the engine to sputter awake. “What a waste of a smoking hot body—”
He kicked off the ground, tires screeching and disappeared into the night.
Kentaro’s cigarette-burned lungs felt like they were lined with sandpaper.
His steps were uneven. He’d looped through alleys, beaten a handful of wannabe toughs just to wring a bit more healing out of their screams, but the smoke in his chest made every breath feel like glass. And he was pretty sure he had a concussion. He'd call Rin, tell her to open a Garganta and let him murder away the hurt in his Idolon form.
Finally—finally— he reached the door to his shitty apartment.
He fumbled the key from his pocket.
“…home sweet—”
CRACK.
Something slammed into the back of his skull. A heavy, metal weight.
His forehead bounced off the door.
He tried to turn, tried to snarl, to swing a desperate backhand—
CRACK.
Another hit. Harder. Right behind the ear.
“What the—”
He didn’t get to finish.
A hand seized his hair, yanking his head back—
And pain bloomed in his neck as a syringe was jammed into him. No hesitation and no finesse.
His vision blurred instantly.
He slumped sideways, cheek sliding down the doorframe.
He saw shapes—just shapes— hair hanging wild, long and black, eyes too open, breath ragged and wet, skin and clothes streaked with ash and dried blood.
Kentaro tried to spit a curse.
Only half a cough came out.
Ai crouched, staring at him. Her face was bruised, one eye bloodshot, her nose still dripping.
But her smile, that smile was serene, dreamy, ecstatic.
Then she stood up again. A crowbar rose in her hands.
He tried to raise an arm.
It didn’t move.
THUNK.
Stars exploded behind his eyes.
THUNK.
She hit him again.
And again. And again.
By the fifth hit the crowbar’s shaft was visibly warped.
By the sixth, Kentaro’s hands weren’t even twitching to block anymore.
Ai finally exhaled.
A long, shuddering breath of relief.
She knelt, patting down his pockets with eerie gentleness, found his key, and pulled it free.
Her voice was almost tender:
“So much to do.”
She unlocked the door, pushed it open with her shoulder, then grabbed Kentaro by the collar and dragged him in—his boots scraping against the floor.
Once they were inside, Ai nudged the door shut behind them with her foot.
Click.