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The Poison Gas InventorAuthor: Unno Juza
| Original Title | 毒瓦斯発明官 |
|---|---|
| Author | 海野 十三 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | On a sweltering Shanghai night, eccentric inventor Dr. Kin—clad in a lab coat and helmet—gazes longingly at exorbitantly priced liquor in a shop window. His brooding is interrupted by a grotesque giant spider descending from above: Sho Kaiseki, a disgraced warlord turned mechanized schemer, who bargains for Dr. Kin’s expertise in creating an undetectable poison gas. Promising crates of rare whiskey and peppermint liqueur, Sho entrusts his engineer Kunsei to learn the secrets of a gas that corrodes minds without trace. Dr. Kin obliges, revealing a sinister "persistent nerve gas" that paralyzes victims into unwitting madness. Yet as Kunsei returns to Sho’s island laboratory, a chilling twist unfolds—the engineer himself has been contaminated, his judgment warped by Dr. Kin’s hidden machinations. Amid dark humor and moral ambiguity, a game of deception spirals between inventor and warlord, where science becomes a weapon and loyalty dissolves like poison in the air. |
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