Classic, brass alarm went off like crazy, jumpin on a night stand and filling the whole room with an annoying sound - a room, which was not especially spacious, yet had all necessary furniture, such as wardrobe, table, armchairs, and basic appliances, including TV and computer. Since it was a bedroom, a bed was also obviously there.
In this very bad, a man was sleeping, whose arm immediately reached from below the bedding, reacting to this unbearable noise, and dropping the alarm on the floor, silencing it completely.
The man rolled around to end up lying on his back, rubbed his eyes and yawned protractedly. He stayed in this very position for a while longer, senselessly looking at the ceiling, before reaching out for his mobile phone to check the hour - it was slightly past 6PM. It may seem to be quite a weird hour for waking up, but not when you are working night shifts only.
Inhabitant of this room moved and sat on the edge of the bed, yawning once more before turning on the TV.
"This is yet another case of the kind within the last few days" the presenter lady was talking, visibly shaken by emotions "Despite the continuous assurances from the government about controlling demon problem and further training of subsequent, specialized combat units, demons' activity is not weaking" the man started stretching, while listening to the news "Countermeasures introduced so far are not providing us with a proper security. Even peaceful representatives of demons, who call themselves Gharthians, and received asylum in our country, are pointing out the shortcomings in actions taken by our government. Many of them went as far as to take an active part in activities aimed at stopping their aggressive kinsmen. The question is: how long do we need to wait for concrete results? Why can't we feel safe in our own country? Why do those peaceful Ghartians care about humans more than our politicians? This situation can be seen not only for our country, but it seems to be a wider trend across the world. Global governments seem to continue on underestimating the problem with numerous speeches and assurances, yet we, people, see how the situation really looks like. For a long time now, we could hear voices about politicians being nothing more than puppets in someone else's hands. What exactly did Perseus achieve so far? Our world..."
Video and sound suddenly disappeared, and well-known, multi-colored bars were now present on the display instead. For a moment, faint, yet chaotic voices could be heard, before the video was brought back. Previous presenter was no longer there, and another woman appeared instead, standing next to an interactive weather forecast map.
"We apologize for this sudden break. Our station is currently experiencing slight technical issues. While this is being addressed, we will be providing a weather forecast. Now, for today's night..."
The man turned off the TV. He did not have much interest in watching a weather forecast. In the end, all he needed to do was to look out the window to notice heavy rain and wind roaring outside. The rainy curtains were thick to the point of lantern lights being bearly visible.
Concerning the situation from TV, he had already seen a number of similar situations before, therefore another case like that was no longer surprising. Interventions from the government's side, especially when someone touched a controversial topic while on air, were a common, everyday occurrence.
The bright side of such cases was that he could extract any kind of useful information even from the journalistic programmes of questionable quality. Of course, he always hoped for more detailed news, possibly from areas closer to him personally, however - knowing how high is the number of events of such kind - he understood that only selected topics were making it on air.
"Same thing yet again" he muttered under his breath, picking up today's, local newspaper "Nothing here too. We still have quite nice income, but the question is: for how long? It's better to earn as much as possible when it's possible, yet I'd rather not go for a bigger business trip.:
The man reached out for his phone, lighted a cigarette and launched his favorite song on a popular, online musice service.
"More subscriptions" he smiled slightly "Some stuff will continue to work even after an apocalypse."
He finished smoking, while relaxing in an armchair, and went to take a shower afterwards.
It has been already five years since he purchased and renovate this ruin, adapting the ground and first floor for his dream business, and making a living area on upper floors, including the bedroom and few other rooms he kept for his personal use.
Interestingly, he managed to achieve all of that owing to demons, or rather - demand for the extermination. Within a year of time, he gathered enough money to purchase the whole tenement - of course, it was not located in the centre of the country's capital, yet it was close enough to get there in a matter hour or so.
Despite having his own business, this man did not retire from his previous job and continued the old lifestyle - at least, that was his assumption. The man could not be absolutely sure as he had one, quite big problem - namely, he did not know what he was doing before the last six years. Simply speaking, he could not remember, had a hole in memories, an amnesia, or whatever else one could call it.
By some weird coincidence, the man's first memory came form around the same time demons' existence was made public, therefore he still counted that fighting demons would ultimately lead him to uncovering the truth - finding his own past.
He stood under the shower, trying - not sure for how many times now - to remember anything from his past. Now matter how hard he tried, and how often, the man could not remember any events taking place before the police took him and his friend, accompanying the man, named Sayaka, from the river bank. Even from that point of time, the man's memories had many gaps.
Interrogation, questions about the anomaly, next to which the polciement found them - everything seemed to be hidden by some weird mist inside the brain. From time to time, he seemed to see something like flashbacks from his memories, mainly striking him at night, during sleep, yet these were fleeting away too fast, making it impossible to put them together sensibly. Even more than that, the man could not tell if these were really memory fragments from his past, or maybe it was his mind playing tricks on him.
Each time he was thinking about it, he felt confusion in the head. Of course, anyone wants to remember their past, and also in his case regaining the memories was important - like everyone, he wanted to know who he was, yet - on the other hand - unknown past was making him anxious, because he could not foresee what to expect. How would his personality chance, when memories come back? Who will he be then? What if his old life hides the pain, because of which he himself - subconsciously - blocks his own memories?
The only information the man managed to gather so far was circumstancial evidence at most, making it hard to draw any far reaching conclusions.
He owed most of the data to Saya's father - unfortunately, according to news they got, the old man died, securing the escape route for them Still, it was him who made sure the antique sord, two beautifully decorated pistols, expensive amulet and severely damaged Japanese IDs were still with them.
Said weapons saved the man's life many times, though being allowed to keep them in the current country was a result of a fortunate - though mainly for him - coincidence. After all, it was during the interrogation, when demons disguised as humans appeared at a police station and the combat started, giving the man a chance to remember how well he was finding himself in a fight. It quickly became clear for him this was his natural environment known from the past - well, it was his body that remembered at least.
This man knew how to handle a sword, was a skilled gunman, and had an ability to use the amulet's powers, but - most of all - he was capable of using all of these skills against the demons. It was exactly the proficiency in handling these creatures that granted him a right to keep the weapons despite gaining the permission with normal procedure was much harder. Of course, it was not handled without any casualties, yet local authorities were still impressed after watching the recording - the impression was good enough that the man also received governmental jobs, and highly paid ones.
While it was owing to these deeply rooted abilities related to combat that he could easily survive in this new reality for all of the humans, from the perspective of looking for his memories, his Japanese ID was giving the most hope - this one, unfortunately though, was mostly burnt, making it possible for only portion of text to be legible.
By the time the man left the shower, he was completely woken up. Moments later, he started going through the pile of clothing, looking for something that woul work well enough not only for the weather, but also for his mood. Portion of the clothes fell on the floor - he did not care much about it since whole room was already in mess, which he rarely cleaned, mainly because of exhaustion he was in for most of the time after completed jobs.
Once the man dug out something fit to be put on, and it took way more time than it should, even in his own standards, fully clothed he headed downstairs, to the pub.
He named his pub "When the going gets tough" in relation to his currently side job, and not the saying it was based on. Unfortunately, because of the Polish counterpart of this saying which was used locally, most people were mistakenly assuming that - and it happened many times already - it was Sayaka who was the boss. Obviously, this was not true and he even considered changing the name, but both Saya, as well as their barman, Gareth, convinced him to not do that - according to them, this name was really good for marketing, and people mistaking who is the owner was moving focus from him personally.
After the tenement was fully renovated, whole ground floor and portion of the first floor were reserved for a pub. Originally, first floor was also to be fully used for the business, yet, the final plan was changed for the owner's room to have additional exits, all of this for security related to the risk hunter's work was bringing.
Having exactly three exits at his disposal, including one leading directly outside and two leading though the pub, he would usually choose the route through the backroom and the kitchen - that way he would not catch that many gazes whenever checking how the things are.
"Hey, K!" Gareth immediately noticed him "You are up early today, boss."
The genesis of this peculiar "name" was directly related to the burnt ID he had. During talks with the police, he asked them to check if it was really his and if using it would allow to find out about K's identity. As a result, they only managed to confirm the photo is indeed his, same as registered fingerprint at the back. Unfortunately, ID only had Japanese emblems and signatures, which still did not help even after contacting that country's authorities as the only thing he gained were the initials - K. S. Remaining data was irrecoverable.
Further investigation did not help too - comparison of fingerprints with the police database and additional DNA tests only confirmed that he did not exist in any Polish or Japanese register, though it was quite possible that his data was among the data lost during the fights with demons in Japan.
Either way, his knowledge of Polish language was fluent, so police assumed K was Polish citizen, though with no significant data available, all the authorities could do was to assign him with temporary name and surname, which were so generic he was only using these for legal actions.
After dealing with formalities, when he was talking with Saya, she suggested several posibilities concerning what his name could be, including some Japanese names like Kenshi, or variations of the name Kris. Once, Saya even suggested she could call him Kiss as a tribute to a band he was a fan of. Still, such barely constructive conversations eneded up with K remaining the way he wanted to be addressed.