Judge Tanaka was no longer a figure of authority. He was an animal in a trap. His eyes were bulging, the whites showing all around. The gag in his mouth was soaked with saliva. He shook his head violently, a frantic, vibrating no-no-no, spraying sweat and dirt. The soil packed around his chest held him like a vice, forcing his breath into shallow, panic-stricken gasps.
"For Yumi," Jiro whispered.
He lowered the saw.
The crowd leaned in. A collective intake of air.
Jiro placed the serrated edge of the bamboo against the left side of the Judge's neck.
He didn't slash. He didn't hack.
He pulled.
Skrr-itch.
The sound was small. It was the sound of dry wood dragging across tight skin. But in the unnatural silence of the park, it sounded like a thunderclap.
The bamboo teeth bit. The skin, stretched tight by the Judge's craning neck, parted.
It wasn't a deep wound not lethal, not yet. But it was ragged. A red line blossomed instantly on the Judge's pale throat, bright and shocking. Blood welled up, thick and dark, trickling down to the collar of his shirt, staining the white fabric that was already brown with soil.
The Judge screamed behind the gag. It was a muffled, wet sound, a vibration of pure agony that started in his chest and died in his throat.
The crowd didn't gasp in horror.
They roared.
"Justice!" someone screamed from the back.
"Make him feel it!" another voice joined in.
It was a primal sound, the sound of a coliseum demanding a finish. The sight of the blood hadn't repulsed them, it had broken the dam. They had spent years watching men like Tanaka walk away from crimes with a smile. Now, seeing him bleed, seeing him mortal, it was intoxicating.
Jiro drew his arm back for the second stroke.
"NO!"
Kenji finally broke the line. He threw himself forward, launching his body through the air.
He collided with Jiro just as the man's arm was coming forward.
They went down in a tangle of limbs and gravel. The bamboo saw flew from Jiro's hand, skittering across the stones like a discarded toy.
"Stay down!" Kenji shouted, pinning Jiro's chest to the ground. He twisted the man's arm behind his back, hearing the shoulder pop.
"I did it!" Jiro was sobbing, his face pressed into the dirt. It wasn't a cry of regret; it was a release of years of poison. "I made him bleed! Did you see it? I made him bleed!"
"Manjiro! Secure the suspect!" Kenji yelled, looking back.
Manjiro was battling his own war. The crowd, seeing their champion tackled, had turned on the police. They were shoving Manjiro, throwing water bottles, spitting.
"Let him go!" a woman shrieked, clawing at Manjiro's jacket. "He's a hero!"
"Get back!" Manjiro bellowed, swinging his shotgun in a wide arc, using the barrel to push the mob back without firing. "Back the hell up!"
Kenji handcuffed Jiro quickly, the metal ratcheting shut. He hauled the man up and shoved him toward Manjiro.
"Watch him!" Kenji ordered.
Kenji spun around and dropped to his knees beside the Judge.
"Judge!" Kenji shouted, his hands hovering over the buried man. "It's over! We got him! Just breathe!"
Judge Tanaka was staring at him. But he wasn't seeing him.
The wound on his neck was bleeding sluggishly, a nasty abrasion but not a fatal arterial spray. Jiro hadn't hit the jugular. The physical damage was minimal.
But something else was wrong.
Tanaka's face had gone from grey to a terrifying, mottled purple. The veins in his forehead were standing out like ropes. His eyes were fixed, unblinking, staring past Kenji, past the crowd, up at the steel lattice of the Tokyo Tower rising into the blue sky.
He was making a sound. A high-pitched wheeze. Hhhnnnn... hhhnnn...
"Judge?" Kenji reached out and ripped the gag from the man's mouth.
Tanaka gasped, a desperate, sucking intake of air that didn't seem to fill his lungs.
"Earth...." Kenji realized, horror washing over him. "The pressure. He can't expand his chest!"
The Shogun hadn't just buried him; he had compacted the soil with hydraulic force. Tanaka was encased in a vice of dirt. Every time he exhaled, the earth settled tighter. Every time he tried to inhale, his ribs hit a wall of stone.
Add to that the sheer, blinding terror of the saw. The adrenaline spike of the cut. The roar of the mob calling for his death.
"Manjiro! Get a shovel!" Kenji screamed, frantically digging at the dirt with his bare hands. His fingernails tore, bleeding into the soil. "He's suffocating! Dig him out!"
Manjiro shoved Jiro to the ground and rushed over, dropping to his knees. The two detectives clawed at the ground like madmen, throwing handfuls of gravel and dirt aside.
"Breathe, Tanaka! Breathe!" Kenji commanded.
Tanaka's chest gave a violent, spasmodic hitch. His jaw clamped shut.
His eyes, wide and terrified, suddenly lost their focus. The light inside them didn't fade slowly; it snapped out.
His head fell forward, chin hitting the dirt.
"No," Kenji whispered. He grabbed the Judge's neck, pressing his fingers into the carotid artery, right next to the jagged saw wound.
Under the skin, there was nothing. No thrum of life. No rhythm.
Just the stillness of a stone.
"No pulse," Kenji said, his voice hollow. "Manjiro... no pulse."
"CPR." Manjiro said, reaching for the Judge's mouth.
"We can't do compressions!" Kenji yelled, hitting the ground with his fist. "He's buried! We can't compress the chest!"
They were helpless. The earth held the body in a rigid embrace. They couldn't pump the heart. They couldn't inflate the lungs.
Judge Masao Tanaka was dead.
He hadn't died from the blade. He had died from the fear. His heart, squeezed by the earth and exploded by the terror of the mob, had simply given up.
Kenji slumped back on his heels, his hands covered in dirt and the Judge's blood. He looked at the body. A High Court Judge, a man who had ruled over the lives of thousands, reduced to a head on the ground, staring blankly at the symbol of the city that killed him.
The crowd, realizing the movement had stopped, fell silent.
The chanting died. The phones were still raised, recording the stillness.
Then, the sound returned.
Not from the crowd. From the sky.
The heavy-lift drone descended. It came lower than before, hovering just ten feet above the dead Judge's head. The downdraft from its rotors kicked up dust, blowing grit into the open, unseeing eyes of the corpse.
The speaker crackled.
"The verdict is rendered."
The voice was calm. Absolute.
Kenji looked up at the black machine, hate burning in his chest like a coal. He wanted to shoot it out of the sky, but he knew it wouldn't matter. The pilot wasn't in the drone. The pilot was watching on a screen, miles away.
"I did not pull the saw." the voice boomed, addressing the silent, stunned crowd. "I did not squeeze his heart. The earth judged him. The people judged him."
The drone pivoted, its camera lens scanning the faces of the crowd the salarymen, the students, the mothers.
"You saw his blood," the voice continued. "And you cheered. Do not look away. This is your justice. You have taken back your power."
A man in the crowd the one who had shouted 'Justice' earlier dropped his gaze. A woman covered her mouth, looking sick. The adrenaline of the mob was fading, replaced by the cold reality of a dead man.
But others... others were still filming. Their eyes were wide, not with horror, but with awe. They had participated in a killing, and the sky hadn't fallen. The police hadn't stopped them.
"The Law is dead..." the drone declared. "Long live the Truth."
The drone pitched forward and ascended rapidly, disappearing over the tree line towards the bay.
Kenji stood up. He felt heavy, as if gravity had doubled.
He looked at Jiro, the construction worker. The man was sitting in the gravel where Manjiro had left him. He was staring at his hands. He wasn't crying anymore. He looked... empty.
"He died scared." Jiro whispered. "Good."
Kenji walked over to him. He didn't shout. He didn't hit him. He just hauled him up by the handcuffs.
"He died because we failed him," Kenji said, his voice rough. "And because you let a monster turn you into a weapon."
Kenji looked at the Judge one last time.
The Shogun was right. He hadn't touched the Judge. He hadn't fired a bullet or swung a blade.
He had built the stage. He had provided the prop. And he had invited the audience.
And the audience had performed perfectly.
As the sirens finally wailed close the gridlock broken now that the show was over. Kenji looked back at the bamboo saw lying in the dirt, stained with the blood of the Law.
The Shogun hadn't just killed a man today. He had weaponized the city itself.
Chapter 12 Ends - City supports Shogun!