It reminded him of one he had seen in a catalog of anti-terrorist equipment. If his memory was correct, that particular model had a built-in submachine gun, which could be fired at the flip of a switch.
After polishing off his hamburger, the man stood up with his tray in hand.
But the man simply deposited his hamburger wrapper in the trash, placed his tray on top of the garbage can, and left.
Sousuke looked and saw the man's case sitting on the ground, where he'd left it.
It was not unheard of for terrorists to blow up a whole crowd of people to get at a particular target. But wasn't Kaname supposed to be a
He dashed through the cramped eatery, upsetting tables and shoving diners. He grabbed the briefcase, which was certainly heavy enough to be a bomb.
However, this action didn't go unnoticed. "Sagara?" said Kaname in disbelief.
"Get down!" shoving away more customers, he charged out of the hamburger joint with the mysterious case.
Sousuke surveyed the surrounding area—during the evening, the shopping district was positively crammed with people. He spotted a parking lot across the street—perhaps there would be fewer people there.
"Move!" yelled Sousuke as he bolted out into the street, angering drivers literally left and right.
Sousuke turned just in time to see a truck squealing to a halt. It couldn't stop in time, and it sent Sousuke flying. He crashed into a bicycle stand on the side of the road.
Standing up as quickly as his woozy head would permit, Sousuke was in the process of trying to relearn how to walk when the suspicious man from the burger place approached him.
"Hey man, are you okay?" inquired the man, relieving Sousuke of the attache case. He popped it open. "Oh, thanks. I don't know what I would have done if I had lost my manuscript."
The man slapped Sousuke on the back and left.
A small group of people, including the truck driver, Kaname, her friends, and some other passersby, stood staring at Sousuke. Some were worried, some confused, some amazed, but all seemed to be expecting some kind of explanation.
"What on Earth are you doing, Sagara?" wondered Kyouko.
"I thought it was a bomb," Sousuke said meekly before collapsing on the pavement.
"At this rate, you'll be dead by the end of the week!" Kurz laughed as he wrapped a bandage around Sousuke's head. "You're probably more dangerous than any terrorists! Try to relax a little."
"I'm trying," said Sousuke.
That evening's hamburger-hut fiasco was just the icing on the cake of four days' worth of misguided efforts with catastrophic (and injurious) results.
No matter how hard he tried, Sousuke could not stop himself from overreacting—acting violently, crashing around, destroying public property, disturbing class—and Eri Kagurazaka and Kaname never let him forget it.
He never ran out of energy or fresh bruises.
Even in the harshest combat conditions, Sousuke hadn't ever taken so much abuse in such a short period of time. He fell down stairs, crashed through windows, crumpled beneath a falling pile of books in the library, and chafed his chest while tackling a plaster art model, among other things.
"You can't keep up this pace," decided Kurz. "Tomorrow, we'll switch. Mao and I will keep watch outside the school."
"What if the enemy comes inside the school?"
"I doubt that will happen. I wonder whether Kaname's really a target even."
"Wishful thinking is dangerous." Sousuke couldn't help but frown at Kurz's easygoing attitude. "You always must take every possibility into account—"
"If you want to get hit by a truck," interrupted Kurz. "Have you ever heard the expression 'tilting at windmills'?"
The look on Sousuke's face indicated that he had not.
"Hm. It's like a sumo fighting against his own loincloth."
"Loincloth?"
"You don't know that one? Are you even Japanese?" Kurz finished wrapping the bandage and returned to the window. "There's one thing I don't understand."
"About loincloths?"
Kurz rolled his eyes.
"About Kaname. She seems so… normal. I mean, she's pretty but not, like, jaw-dropping hot. And her personal history is very commonplace—compared to ours, at least."
"You might be right."
If Sousuke learned nothing else from this mission, he'd at least discovered the startling difference between others his age and him.
