Reality As She Knows It

Chapter 15 Part 1: The Crescent Curse

We'll finally find out where Eiji is!!!

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           “What do you plan with him, Master?”

            Those words crept to Eiji's fatigue-clouded senses and he slowly opened his eyes. Not without some difficulty, of course. It seems his left eye was swollen.

            “Later, Hagane. He's awake.”

            There were five men there with him on the room, Eiji noted, all of them wearing black suits except for the one guy who was wearing a gray kimono with white linings instead.

            The leader.

            “Whe...” Eiji tried to speak but found his own voice to be too hoarse.

            “Give him water,” the man in the gray kimono said.

            One of the men immediately left and just as quickly came back with a pitcher of water and a glass. He then poured water on the glass, handed it to the kimono guy and then set the pitcher on the table beside the bed.

            The kimono guy handed the glass to Eiji. “Here. You're strong enough to drink it on your own. No need to baby you.”

            Eiji smirked, ignoring the slight pain the brought to his face. He drank the water, all the while thinking what he was doing here.

           The last thing he remembered was darkness surrounding him as he fell unconscious after the Red Lions beat him up.

            “Who are you guys?” he asked, more clearly now.

            “The question Eiji is why have we brought you here,” kimono guy said.

            Eiji nodded. “Yes. I'd like to know that too. But it would only be right to know who I'm talking to first.”

            The kimono guy gave a smirk of his own. “Sensible child. Well, would you like to tell him who we are, Hagane?” He motioned to the man nearest to him.

            “Gladly, Master Akiyama.”

            He calls him Master. The same way I call Master Katsu.

            “We are the Crescent Curse, an elite group of fighters and a secret organization maintaining order amongst gangs all over the world.”

            Eiji nodded. “Like a government?”

           “No, more like a peacemaker. We don't get involved unless absolutely necessary.”

            “I still don't get it.”

           The guy called Hagane was about to speak but the kimono guy – err... Akiyama – silence him with a look.

            Akiyama continued where Hagane left off. “You see Eiji, all of the original members of Crescent Curse were part of different gangs. 40 years ago, gang wars erupted here in Japan. Boundaries crossed, bloodshed left and right... it was utter chaos. I was but a child then but it still hit me hard. It became so out of control that the whole nation was affected. Japan's government tried to stop it but everything they did only fired the yakuza members more.”

            Eiji sat up and listened closely.

            “My father, along with many other gang members who are the best fighters of their respective gangs had had enough so they formed Crescent Curse. They did what the government couldn't. They stopped the gang wars. And when it was over, they faded into the background. That is how Crescent Curse works. We are not simple gangsters anymore. In fact, all of us have legal works and businesses. The Crescent Curse is only called and gathered when and where it is needed.”