No.6 (Volume 1) - Why Did I Open the Window That Night?

Shion lives in the holy city known as No. 6. He’s gifted and destined for great things which is why he lives in the nicest part of town. Everything changes when a mysterious injured boy appears at his window.

No.6 (Volume 1) – Why Did I Open the Window That Night?

What happened?

The boy who calls himself Rat is a wanted fugitive with a violence chip, however, Shion has no intention of turning him over to the authorities. By the morning, Rat is gone, but Shion’s life has been changed forever. The security bureau determines that he is untrustworthy and strips him of his status and privileges. He moves with his mother to a cheaper area of town and goes about rebuilding his life.

Four years later, Shion is working for the Forest Park Administration while studying to complete his degree. One day, one of the cleaning droids acts up alerting him and his boss, Yamase to a body. When they get there the body looks like it’s been there for days. Rigour Mortis set in and then dissipated before Shion’s eyes. It was troubling. More so when he learnt the victim was only thirty years old. He talked it over with Safu, his only childhood friend that stuck by him. However, she’s going away for two years, so he’ll have to work this out on his own.

The next day, Yamase tells Shion that the bureau is reporting it as an accident which makes Shion question the authorities. Yamase tries to forget about it, but something happens to him. He doubles over, his body ageing at an accelerated rate. He died and then an insect emerged from the back of his neck. The security bureau arrests Shion as a suspect, but he is rescued by Rat. Together they escape outside of No.6. Can Shion find out what is going on?

No 6 Volume 1 Shion sees No 6 from the outside

What did you think?

All right, this was some nice retro science fiction. It has all the dystopian hallmarks that you might associate with this sort of story. There’s the perfect crime-free city where the citizens are happily working away to make it a better place, blissfully unaware of the way they are being controlled and manipulated. This first volume did not give us any answers whatsoever, but it did a fantastic job of pulling me into this world.

My first guess is that the city is not run by humans and is a nursery for some kind of alien/insectoid creature. The wasps emerging from the bodies were likely put in as grubs. I think they probably feed off the neurology of humans which is why it’s geared towards learning and advancements. Probably also as a way to distract the humans from what is really going on.

I don’t think this story does anything that you can’t find in other dystopian science fiction stories, but it was very nicely put together which made me breeze through the book. It absolutely grabbed me and raised enough questions that I will be picking up the next volume. I’m looking forward to getting some answers and continuing to theorise about them in their absence.