“Wait,” Jiro said, looking up at Sheena. “You want me to do what?”

“I want you to kill a man.”

Jiro turned away. The outdoor bath and the vomiting lion were sending up trails of steam into the air. The mountains beyond the fence were a shock of summer green. This situation, thought Jiro, was utterly ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous in twenty million different ways.

“Kill a man … You say it like you’re asking for a cup of tea.”

“It is only a human man.”

“I’m a human too, you know.”

“I am aware of that.”

Silence. Here he was, naked, his butt facing a lustful sociopathic fish woman, and for some reason, the two of them were plotting murder. Behind him, he felt the two heads of Sheena’s tongue trying to wiggle their way up between his butt cheeks. He swatted it away.

“I can’t just murder a man.”

“Yes you can. Kill him or no money for you.”

“Is there even a good reason?”

“I don’t like him.”

“That’s not a good reason!”

Sheena sighed. He could hear her tongue slapping impatiently on the tiles of the bath. Any more and she was liable to sting him. “Must I hold your hand for everything? Okay, I will tell you this much. His fishing boat has been frequenting a certain territory of mine. A territory where kaiju under my protection live. He and his boat are a nuisance to me.”

“What do you mean nu—”

“No more questions. You are ruining my morning. Now will you do this thing for me or not?”

Jiro sat watching the steam rise from the stones. Last night with Kaori he had learned a thing. That he could not keep running away. That he needed to take charge. From now on, he was going to make his own decisions. He stood up with his hands over little Jiro, turned, and looked Sheena straight in her golden cat eyes.

“No, I will not do this thing for you. It is immoral. It is ridiculous. So no. I will not go to Koko Town, and I absolutely will not kill this man for you. And that’s final.”

#

Jiro sat on the back seat of the bus to Koko Town, the vinyl seat underneath him jolting from the vehicle’s poor suspension. He put his head to the window glass and sighed.

“I’m not going to kill him,” he muttered to himself. “I just want to figure out what’s going on. Why this man is going to Sheena’s island. What kind of disturbance he is causing.”

Outside the window, the morning sun had set the ocean aflame in a sparkling carpet of fire. Pines, planted by the road to keep the soil from being blown away by the sea breeze, blurred past as the bus drove. Their trunks and limbs were twisted into strange shapes by the wind.

There were a few others on the bus, mostly old men and women, heading to the town to run their errands, catch an early discount movie, or shop for food. There was one younger couple though, two seats ahead of Jiro. A man with a bowl cut and, next to him, a girl in a spaghetti camisole. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail. The tip of her ponytail was white, like someone had dipped it into a bucket of white paint. The bus hit a pothole and Jiro slammed his forehead against the window.

When Jiro looked again, the girl was bent over the man’s lap, out of Jiro’s view. The white end of her ponytail was bobbing up and down above the edge of their seat. She must have dropped something, he thought absently, before looking back out the window. Why does everyone else get to live a normal life? Why was I the only one to be hired for an … an assassination?

“He’s the captain of a ship,” Sheena had told him. “The ship’s name is Hinomaru. It’s a grand name, though, for such a pitiful little vessel like his.”

“Can’t you tell me anything else?”

“Yes,” Sheena had replied. “But I will not. Right now, you are a feeble little worm. You are less than a human. You are a tool I use to provide myself with pleasure. If you wish to be something more than a worm, show me you can solve this problem.”

“Fuck that woman!” Jiro shouted and banged his head against the window glass. Several of the old people on the bus turned back and gave him angry looks. The girl with the ponytail sat up from the seat, a little dribble of something on the edge of her mouth. Jiro mumbled an apology … If he wasn’t careful, this whole affair was liable to turn him into a monster too. With Sheena’s abilities, surely she could handle killing one or two humans. Why ask Jiro to do it? Was it another one of her cruel games?

They were approaching the town now, and the main road pulled away from the coast. Little shacks started to appear, then houses, then taller buildings—their facades worn out by the salt wind. Inside the buildings were offices, apartments, shops, restaurants. This was a town with tens of thousands of people, not to mention countless hordes of selfie stick-wielding tourists who visited Koko Town for its steamed buns, fresh seafood sashimi, sun-dried himono fish, and, of course, the town’s legendary beaches and ocean views. How was he going to find one man in all of this? He didn’t even know the guy’s name. Captain of the Hinomaru. Some clue.

The bus let Jiro off at the port. A line of white ships dotted the water’s edge. It was hotter here and as humid as some of the baths. He was already starting to sweat.

As the bus pulled away, something caught Jiro’s eye. It was the ponytail girl. She was looking at Jiro with her face and breasts pressed to the glass. She was bobbing up and down, and he could see her nipples, which poked through the fabric of her shirt, slide up and down the window. She smiled and waved at Jiro with her ponytail.

“Nice gal,” Jiro said to himself. “At least the locals here are friendly.”

Then he froze. Wait … what? Her ponytail …? He rubbed his eyes. The bus turned a corner, and he could see the girl, still bobbing with her cleavage smushed against the glass. Yes, very clearly, behind her head, he could see the white-tipped ponytail, standing up above the girl’s head, swishing in a way that no ordinary ponytail could.

Either the heat had turned him completely mad, or this ponytail was waving hello.