Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume SS1 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

The Old Ravine Cathedral / Noon / Sunny

“The criminal is among us.”

A voice void of warmth echoed throughout the quiet cathedral.

There were several people inside, pale in the face and waiting with bated breath for the next words.

It was an old cathedral with cracked, plastered walls; an altar covered in a thin coat of dust after many years of neglect; and dulled wooden floors, which had collected countless scuffs and dents from shoes and furniture.

Each person’s face either appeared upset or anxious—a parting gift left by the bizarre, savage murder. They were all focused on one man who had an entirely blank expression.

“The criminal purposely chose one of the sixty-eight elementary school students and poisoned his breakfast. This murder was undeniably intentional,” revealed the only calm voice—a tall man who was standing in the center of the cathedral.

He wore a flat cap and sunglasses and was spinning an unlit Japanese smoking pipe in one leather-gloved hand. Violent words like murderer and kill slipped off his tongue with cold apathy, but behind the sunglasses, his eyes were stubbornly sharp.

The detective’s name was Ayatsuji.

His audience included the teachers and other essential staff still traumatized by the murder that had occurred during their school retreat. Ayatsuji was currently in the middle of solving the mystery.

“But, Detective…,” an anxious-looking teacher in a suit muttered, no longer able to keep himself from taking a step forward. His bloodshot eyes and the bags underneath them made it look like he had hardly slept a wink. “It’s true the police cited poisoning as the cause of death…but it was a poisoned needle that killed the boy, not tainted food, wasn’t it? The boy apparently had a pinprick on the back of his neck…”

“That was done to throw us off,” Ayatsuji declared. “The suspect most likely pretended to come to the suffering victim’s aid and pricked him with a needle. Based on the child’s dilated pupils, paralysis, and difficulty breathing, there’s no doubt this was a nerve toxin. Even an expert would have trouble determining how it was transmitted—orally or through an open wound. The criminal exploited that to throw the police off the real cause of death.”

“B-but…surely, the police checked the victim’s food for poison! Plus, the meal was cooked in one big pot, and we all used the same plates stored on the same shelf. There was only one cafeteria, one kitchen, and one chef. Wouldn’t that make it nearly impossible to target a single student?”

“‘Impossible’?” Ayatsuji shot the teacher a piercing gaze. “Quite the opposite.”

A bespectacled woman standing next to the flustered teacher chimed in. “So…does that mean someone waited to poison the student until the tables were set and everyone was about to dig in?”

Ayatsuji shook his head. “No. With that many students present, someone would have seen something. Distracting the victim in a crowd like that wouldn’t have been possible, either.”

“Then how did they do it?”

“Heh… Yeah… I figured someone would eventually ask.” Ayatsuji sighed to himself before falling silent for a few moments.

Everyone anxiously waited under the detective’s eerie, heavy silence while they exchanged glances: Did we say something wrong, perhaps?

“Whatever. That’s fine. I was already painfully aware of how you all lack brains. It appears that, as the detective, I have a duty to explain every last detail. It’s like I’m teaching you how to change a diaper. Your simplemindedness brings a smile to my face.”

Everyone was bewildered by the detective’s words. In fact, it would be the next morning before anyone realized that they should have been offended.

The detective put his pipe in his mouth and exhaled a slow puff of faint smoke.

“Are you familiar with Occam’s razor?” he asked.

“Razor…?”

The audience exchanged curious glances.

“It’s a basic problem-solving principle where the theory with the smallest possible set of elements is closest to the truth. In other words, the simplest solution is often the right one,” Ayatsuji explained while surveying each of their expressions. “Every child ate the same dish, and yet only one was killed. Then the logic is simple: The culprit poisoned the whole class but was aiming to murder just one student. That is the simplest explanation when you realize that not only does this kind of poison exist, but it can also be found almost everywhere in nature.”

“What…?!”

A stir rippled through the crowd, but Ayatsuji placed the pipe back between his lips and continued, unfazed.

“The criminal applied an extremely small amount of poison to every student’s plate the night before. The next morning, the criminal waited until everyone was eating and then made the victim get up from his seat.”

The staff recalled that morning’s events. Right before the incident, one teacher’s stolen wallet had been found in the victim’s bag, and the boy ended up being scolded for twenty minutes. However, the scolding happened in the corner of the cafeteria, where everyone could see them, so nobody ever thought that this had somehow led to the child’s demise.

“So someone poisoned him then…?”

“You clearly have terrible short-term memory. Did I not already explain to you a few minutes ago that all the plates had poison on them?” Ayatsuji replied with a cold stare. “The poison was applied to the egg bowls. It’s the world’s deadliest poison; a single gram can kill a million people. This naturally occurring toxin is produced in soil or at the bottoms of lakes. Under the right conditions, it can multiply at an extremely alarming rate.”

“Ohhh!” a custodian who had been quiet suddenly shouted. “Botulinum toxin…!”

Ayatsuji nodded. “Clostridium botulinum is an anaerobic bacterium that produces a deadly toxin—one powerful enough to be used by terrorists as a biological weapon. It grows explosively in anything that comes into contact with raw eggs. The bacteria itself usually doesn’t produce any poison once consumed, but eating something contaminated with enough spores will prove fatal within eight to thirty-two hours.”

The detective quietly walked through the cathedral as he slowly revealed the truth. The old, run-down floors didn’t creak, let alone make a sound.

“The criminal waited until everyone had stirred their raw eggs to have the victim pulled aside, giving the bacteria time to produce enough toxins. Specifically, the criminal had the victim stand in the corner of the cafeteria for a lecture. Now, if a student steps away from their food, the staff is required to wrap it with plastic, but that only makes it easier for anaerobic bacteria to grow, and the criminal knew that. This was how they were able to poison only the one victim. Since all the students ate raw eggs, the victim never would’ve expected that his alone was poisoned.”

“Then that means the criminal is…!”

Everyone shifted their gaze to one male teacher—the PE teacher who’d brought the victim to the corner of the cafeteria and scolded him on the day of his death.

“I—I didn’t do it! I was just—”

“It wasn’t him,” Ayatsuji interrupted. “Think about it. The killer used a time-delay poison like botulinum because they needed the perfect alibi—one perfect enough to keep them away from the victim until he collapsed from the poison. Therefore, the criminal waited for the right moment to lie to the PE teacher and tell him that their stolen wallet was found in the victim’s bag.”

Ayatsuji pointed at one person in the crowd with his pipe. “And the stolen wallet belonged to you. You’re the murderer.”

Everyone immediately shifted their gazes toward the individual.

“M-me…?” uttered an almost inaudible voice.

It was the man who’d been questioning the detective only moments earlier about how the victim was killed. A typical young elementary school teacher in a black suit and glasses, the man seemed jovial and friendly. He had a perfectly ordinary, forgettable face.

“This can’t be…”

“Did he really…?”

The revelation created a stir.

“Th-this is ridiculous. Me? Kill a child?” The accused tensely smirked. “I could never do such a thing! I’m just a language teacher. I don’t know anything about bacteria! Besides, where is your proof that I killed anyone?!”

“You want proof?” Ayatsuji’s voice was deep yet soft, as if he’d been expecting such an argument. “Almost right after I arrived here, you quickly stuck the tiny, poisoned needle to the sole of your shoe and took a petri dish through the mountain path to bury it, hiding the evidence—just as I expected you to do. The markings the needle left in the soil will tell us exactly where along the trail you went, and if that leads us to that petri dish, then you won’t be able to talk your way out of this anymore.”

“Er… Uh…”

The teacher took a step back, overwhelmed by the others’ stares. Until a few seconds ago, the old cathedral was a mix of anxiety, confusion, and fear—but confusion never lasts long. The only emotion now was pure rage.

“Don’t waste your time trying to rack that puny brain of yours,” Ayatsuji advised in a subzero tone. “Numerous criminals have tried countless times to avoid my pursuit, but their efforts have never once borne fruit.”

The teacher took another step back in fear when…

“Detective Ayatsuji!” a woman at the entrance of the cathedral shouted. “What are you doing?! What’s everyone doing in here?! How many times do I have to tell you to stop naming criminals without permission?!”

This slender woman was wearing a suit and had stern, almond-shaped eyes. She was a size smaller than the accused teacher.

“Oh? If it isn’t Tsujimura.” The detective turned his cold gaze in the woman’s direction. “You always have the worst timing, don’t you?”

The teacher took off, sprinting as quickly as he could.

“He’s trying to get away!” someone shouted.

“Tsujimura, that’s the killer!” Ayatsuji called. “Stop him!”

“Huh…? Huh?!”

The bloodthirsty teacher charged toward the entrance, but the woman named Tsujimura was standing in his way.

He lowered his stance even more and headed straight for her. But right before they collided, she spun and kicked his jaw so quickly that he didn’t even see her leg coming. The kick sent him rolling across the floor.

She swung her heel back down, slicing through the air before burying it in the man’s face, slamming his head onto the ground. Once he was facedown, she swiftly grabbed his arm and twisted it behind his back.

“Stay still,” Tsujimura demanded while she pressed her knee into his back, holding him in place. “You have the right to remain silent and to an attorney.”

“You never grow tired of saying that, do you?” Ayatsuji griped.

“Well…he has his rights! It’d be a shame if I didn’t tell him them!” Tsujimura insisted.

“You watch too many movies.” The detective coldly peered down at her. “Besides, I doubt this man has the time to utilize such leisurely rights.”

“First and foremost!” Tsujimura glared at the detective while still holding the man to the floor. “Detective Ayatsuji, I’m going to have to report you to the higher-ups for breaking protocol. If you continue to ignore our warnings and collar suspects, then the Division will take action against you.”

“What are you rambling on about? You people are the ones who hired me to solve this case. So as your faithful dog, I gathered everyone here and did just that. Time was of the essence; there were still children’s names left on that man’s hit list. If the Division sees me as a dog, then they could at least praise me for doing tricks.”

“Damn it all! I should’ve gotten away with it!” the teacher yelled, pressed against the ground. “Those arrogant little shits, treating me like a fool day in and day out… I’ll teach them how the real world works. I refuse to be arrested until I make every last one of them regret what they did to me!”

“‘Arrested’?” The detective narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have to worry about that. You’re not under arrest. Criminals exposed by the Homicide Detective aren’t sent to prison, either. Do you not know why they call me the Homicide Detective?”

“Detective Ayatsuji!” Tsujimura shouted in rebuke.

“Tsujimura, let that man go.”

“But—!”

“Or else you’ll get caught up in this, too.”

The instant Tsujimura let her guard down, the man leaped up and shoved her into the nearby wall, knocking the wind out of her. He then sprinted for the entrance once more.

Ayatsuji didn’t say a word during the man’s escape. He simply gazed at the old stained glass window over the doorway.

Once a place of worship, the cathedral eventually came to be used as a school camp’s assembly hall. Countless cracks ran across the walls, and only a few strips of tape held the broken stained glass window together.

Another fissure appeared in the glass when Tsujimura hit the wall, and that produced even more cracks until the entire window began to shatter.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way!” the man shouted as he ran. “This must be some kind of mistake! Nobody was supposed to find out… I would never be caught! He said so himself!”

Azure, jade, scarlet—various colors of beautiful stained glass depicting a knight and the Holy Mother had bathed in the rays of the sun for nearly a century. But these shards of the past came crumbling down in a split second.

Each colorful shard glittered as if it harbored light itself.

One heavy sheet of glass split the man in two from the shoulder to his waist.

Fresh blood squirted into the air.

The man’s attempt to scream could only be described as a whistle coming from his throat.

Another broad sheet of glass sliced off the criminal’s ear before burying itself into the nape of his neck, only stopping once it reached his chest. Vermilion blood spewed out of his gaping wound like a geyser, creating a pool in front of the cathedral as vivid as the shards of colored glass that rained upon it.

The man—or what remained of him—slowly fell forward onto the ground.

And then…silence.

“Is he…?” one of the spectators muttered. “Is he dead…?”

Everyone stood in mute disbelief. They couldn’t scream. They couldn’t even process what had happened.

The old stained glass had clearly been badly cracked, but the tape holding it together should have kept it in place for years to come. No one present ever even fathomed that they’d see it collapse.

And yet, it had coincidentally, now of all times, come crashing down.

The blood squirting out of the corpse soon lost momentum until there was no more bodily fluid left.

“The killer…died…in a freak accident…?” one of the witnesses muttered.

However, this was simply a misunderstanding. The detective, who was staring at the deceased without even batting an eye, was a cold, calculating man who had been sent here by the government to solve the case.

He was called the Homicide Detective, and everyone thought it was because he solved homicides—at least, until now.

“…Detective,” Tsujimura muttered as she sat up, grunting through her clenched jaw. “Detective Ayatsuji, once again, you—”

“That was a natural phenomenon.”

There wasn’t even a slight change in Ayatsuji’s tone.

“Just as death lies near life—and just as night comes after twilight—some phenomena are inevitable no matter what you intend or wish for. I had nothing to do with this,” he explained. “Those whose crimes I expose are one hundred percent guaranteed to die in an accident.”

His voice was as cold as a corpse. His black shadow didn’t even seem human.

Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User: the Homicide Detective…

He hadn’t been given that name for solving homicide cases.

“You’re a detective who murders the culprits…” Tsujimura grunted, trying to suppress her anger as she stood back up.