Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume SS1 - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

In Front of the Special Division Secret Base / Morning / Sunny

My bangs look amazing.

I pinched a lock of my hair and lifted it up while checking my reflection in the car window. My eyes met my own, so I narrowed my eyes sternly.

Perfect, I thought. No skill user would even dare try to face an agent as terrifying as me. I was perfect.

I was in the library’s rear parking lot. It was eerily silent. Aside from the few elderly visitors coming and going, there were no signs of life.

That made sense, though. After all, this was a top secret government facility, an intelligence base under the Ministry of Home Affairs’ control. And it was currently my one and only workplace. It seemed like a mountainside library on the surface, but a closer inspection would reveal its nuclear base–level security. The guards here were equipped with submachine guns hidden inside the pouches at their waists.

I, Tsujimura, was a government worker at this facility and an agent for the Special Division for Unusual Powers, a secret, unofficial organization within the Ministry of Home Affairs.

After unlocking my car, I slipped into the driver’s seat. It was a silver Aston Martin I’d gone through the trouble of having imported from England—the perfect car for an agent. Its lightweight magnesium body and twelve-cylinder engine evoked a living machine built to run. This vehicle had the speed and toughness that every secret agent needed…or at least, that was the idea, but I still hadn’t been lucky enough to end up in any car chases.

I turned the key and started driving. The path into town was quiet, so I began contemplating the situation I was in.

My job was to monitor one particular detective. He lived up to his title, since he would solve any case or issue presented to him. Most of his jobs involved saving people who were in trouble, so on the scale of “good guy” versus “bad guy,” he skewed toward the former.

The government, however, saw things differently. To them, he was like a nuclear warhead left on the sidewalk. They always had to know exactly what he was doing, what he was thinking, and where he was. If he went out of control on them, he was liable to raze an entire city, and more than a few men at the top would lose their jobs if that happened on their watch.

This detective was a Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User and a regular on the government’s watch list. The Homicide Detective—that was the nickname given to this man who I’d been assigned to monitor and manage in my capacity as a Special Division agent.

Failure wasn’t an option.

I could still clearly remember how cold the veteran agent’s eyes were when they were relaying the orders to me.

After stopping by a café and grabbing a sugar-free latte, I placed my drink in the car cup holder and drove toward my destination once more, taking an occasional sip of coffee. Every time I stopped at a red light, I would check the rearview mirror: Looks like nobody’s tailing me, yet again.

You could never be too cautious when you worked for the government, especially when you were a rookie agent such as myself. That said, I’d never actually had anyone follow me.

At any rate, I was a government agent, which still sounded outrageous to me, even though I’d been on assignment for two years now. Sometimes, I felt like I was in a movie or mystery novel. Only a few years ago, I was just an ignorant college student, but now I was part of something so secret that I had to tell even my closest friends that I worked for an import company.

Of course, I was confident in my abilities. I passed my marksmanship and martial arts training with flying colors, and I had more drive than anyone. That was why I’d been given such an important mission. The higher-ups would never assign this work to someone who wasn’t capable of a job well-done…is what I’d like to think.

I suddenly noticed my destination up ahead: the Ayatsuji Detective Agency. Facing the main road was an old brick building with a narrow entrance on the first floor. At first glance, it looked like just some shabby building on the corner of some shabby street, but the government had actually bought the rest of the building and every adjacent one for security reasons.

After driving past the front of the building, I parked at a paid lot up ahead, then pretended to do my makeup in the side mirror while checking for any suspicious individuals. Next, I took the headset out of my pocket, put it over my ears, and hit the call button.

“Calling backup. Code 4048.”

My voice and request were instantly recognized by the device, which promptly put me on the line with the other party.

“This is Sniper Support Team One,” a man boorishly answered.

“This is Agent Code 4048, Inspector Tsujimura. Ready to track target and monitor the interior.”

“Roger that. Shifting to position D-2 and monitoring. Target is inside the building.”

“Good work,” I replied, but it was met with a subtle chuckle.

“You’re late, Tsujimura. Did your superior lecture you again?”

“N-no, sir!”

“The look on your face tells me all I need to know.”

I shifted my gaze toward the top of the building across the street, where I briefly noticed a lens on the edge of the rooftop as the sunlight reflected off it. They were the Division’s sniper team who monitored the detective agency twenty-four hours a day. Furthermore, they had orders to shoot Detective Ayatsuji on sight if he ever betrayed the government or used his skill on a civilian without permission.

“As I’m sure you know,” the sniper began over the radio, “that building is a tiger’s cage. Our job’s to shoot the tiger dead if it acts up, but we want to avoid that, yeah?”

“…Don’t worry. I’m an agent, after all.”

“I know. Good luck in there. Sniper Team out.”

After the radio cut out, I took a deep breath, held it in, then exhaled.

Bring it on.

I’d developed a habit of saying that twice every night before going to bed. As long as I was around, I wasn’t going to let any sinister skill user get away with evil.

I walked up to the agency and eventually stopped in front of the entrance. After spinning my key around my finger and stuffing it into my pocket, I leaned forward and said:

“Your biggest mistake was being born in the same era as me.”

It was a line from this one incredible spy movie I loved about a female spy who wore a biker jacket and sunglasses. I couldn’t wait to be like her one day.

I then opened the front door.

The inside was dim and smelled faintly of pipe smoke. The arched ceiling hung over the rows of amber wicker chairs. Floor to ceiling bookshelves lined the walls, and a ceiling fan was slowly stirring the lukewarm air. The Western antique lamp illuminated the room with a copper light, giving the place a kind of listless, lazy afternoon ambience, even in the morning.

Sprawled out on the floor by their master’s feet were two cats: one black and one calico, but both yawning as if they were bored. The black cat looked up at me and meowed disinterestedly at me.

The place looked more like some sort of Western lounge than a detective agency.

The detective was rocking in his armchair with a book in hand and slowly exhaling the smoke from his pipe.

“…Hey, Tsujimura. Good morning.”

He glanced in my direction before immediately going back to his book. This pale-skinned man was wearing a light-violet flat cap over his emotionless eyes, which could send a chill down the spine of anyone who looked in them.

He was a Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User.

Perhaps it was his title… Then again, maybe it was something else entirely… Regardless, there was something powerful about this detective that drew me toward him when he was like this—much to my dismay. I guess you could call it an aura.

“Detective Ayatsuji.” I spoke with an even stiffer voice than usual so that he wouldn’t pick up on my timidness. “‘Good morning’? Really? Don’t you have something more important to tell me first?”

“…Oh?” Detective Ayatsuji grunted as he turned the page. “Do I?”

He didn’t even take his eyes off the book. This wasn’t going to work.

In my head, the ideal version of myself (dressed in a biker jacket and sunglasses) whispered, What is your mission? You’re an agent. And who is that man? He’s your target, who you’re supposed to be monitoring. In other words, he should be looking to you for guidance. Are you really fine with him disrespecting you like this?

No way! I firmly replied, then confidently strolled over to the detective’s side and swiped the book right out of his hand.

“You could at least put your book down when someone’s talking to you,” I said as icily as I could. “I was given orders to keep an eye on you, Detective Ayatsuji, and depending on your attitude, I have the right to shoot you. Got it?”

He idly looked up at the book I’d snatched from him and replied, “Yes, message received. You really know how to threaten people.”

The detective flipped his pipe around and tapped it a few times to empty the ashes.

“How about this, then?” he said. “From now on, I’ll treat you with respect, and in return, you’ll make me a cup of coffee.”

“Oh. That’s it?” His anticlimactic request caught me off guard. “Sure, I can do that.”

“Two brown sugars, no milk.”

“All right.”

I went into the kitchen, boiled some water, and placed coffee grounds into the dripper. Then I slowly poured the water over the coffee grounds and waited for it to stop bubbling before pouring the rest. I timed it perfectly, swiftly removing the dripper before the coffee could turn bitter or overdiluted. Only when I began to check the richness and aroma did it hit me.

“I am not your maid!” I screamed.

“Took you long enough to realize,” Detective Ayatsuji coldly replied with his eyes still glued on the book. “It just occurred to me—what is this ‘more important’ thing I should be telling you?”

“Yesterday’s incident!” I shouted with a cup of coffee in hand. “The student murdered during a school retreat. You ignored the Division’s warning and solved the case! We can’t have you doing that!”

“Why?” he asked calmly.

Yesterday’s case: an elementary school student killed among his classmates at a three-night, four-day outdoor retreat. The urgency of the crime made the Division call in Detective Ayatsuji. Apparently, one of the students was related to some government official, so special measures were taken. (Obviously, that information never reached any of us on the case, since the higher-ups in any job would never relay such personal information to their low-level employees.)

Therefore, Detective Ayatsuji was closely monitored, since he was obviously going to be on-site investigating. After all, he was far more dangerous than any child murderer. Nevertheless, the second we took our eyes off him…

“Listen here, Detective Ayatsuji. The Division is being quite generous by sending me to your office and having me monitor you. You do realize that, under normal circumstances, you’d be dealing with gun-toting guards and iron-barred windows, yes? So you can’t complain about how you’re being treated. If anything, you ought to appreciate—”

“I do appreciate it. Especially the fact that they sent someone as easy to handle as you.”

“Excuse me?!”

I almost instinctively raised my fist, but I still had a cup of coffee in my right hand.

“How about you put that cup of coffee right there? Wouldn’t want it to go to waste.”

“Huh…? Oh, okay.”

He had a point, so I reluctantly placed the cup on his coffee table. He then closed his book, calmly lifted the cup, and leisurely took a sip.

“Oh, wow. Not bad.”

“Th-thanks.”

He praised me. That really came out of nowhere…

Then it hit me.

“You’re not fooling anyone with your smooth-talking!” I yelled. “Argh… What do you even mean, I’m ‘easy to handle’?! I’ll have you know that I’m a secret agent! I’m known among my peers as a woman of mystery! Nothing about an elite go-getter like me is easy to handle—”

“Your boss chewed you out before you got here, didn’t he?”

“Uh?!”

“So you stopped by the café for a latte as a little pick-me-up. After that, you took the narrow backroad past the used bookstore in District One to get here.”

“Huh?! Wha—?!”

“Before you came in, you radioed your snipers, and they told you they were moving to D-2 for further surveillance,” he continued. “That was when you recited that movie line—the trademark quip. ‘Your biggest mistake was being born in the same era as me,’ I believe it was?”

“Wh-what the—?! How did you know all that?! I… How?!”

“Relax.”

No way in hell I could relax after hearing that.

Secrecy was the greatest armor we had in this business. The most predictable agents only met danger and destruction and ambushes. I was here to monitor the detective, and any slips on my end would affect the odds of my mission going well.

He was right, though. When I was at the library, which was one of our secret bases, my mentor in the Division, Sakaguchi, reprimanded me because of what happened during the mission the previous day. I also bought a latte on my way here and used that route in the antique-book district. He was right about it all. The confidence I’d had before stepping inside this agency just exploded like fireworks, slowly fizzling out into nothingness.

“Calm down, woman of mystery. You didn’t do anything wrong. We both simply did our jobs. That’s all. You’re completely right, too. Under normal circumstances, I would be behind bars. I’ve certainly killed enough people to deserve that, and I have the potential to kill more going forward as well. So why am I sitting in my office drinking coffee, you ask? Because the government considers me a useful pawn—my powers of observation are very keen for a detective. As I just proved to you.”

“Observation…”

Detective Ayatsuji sighed, exhausted, then placed his pipe down before continuing:

“You were fifteen minutes later than usual, so I figured your boss had chewed you out. You’re never late without a reason, and I’ve heard your boss is quite a stickler. I also heard there’s a nearby café you frequent, and from your lipstick smudge, I guessed you ordered a latte. And that used bookstore is on a one-way street that doesn’t get much traffic, which lets you save time while still looking out for pursuers. Oh, and you always contact the sniper unit in front of my building whenever you visit. As for their position change: that much I can predict since they’re watching me twenty-four seven.”

Powers of observation…

So this is what it means to be a true detective…

“W-wait, wait, wait!” I protested while pointing at the entrance of the agency. “That movie line I said when I got here! ‘Your biggest mistake was being born in the same era as me!’ How…how did you guess that?!”

“Oh, that?” He didn’t even bat an eye. “You should keep your voice down if you don’t want people hearing you.”

I covered my face and hunched over.

That was hands down the most embarrassing moment of my life.

Before I forget, I should probably explain what skill users are.

While not exactly common, some people possess special powers, and certain powers are a threat to society. Therefore, the government created a secret organization called the Special Division for Unusual Powers to monitor them.

Skill-user crimes were showing no signs of decline, and organized crime involving skill users was a constant source of anxiety for the Division. Of course, not all skill users were bad people. Some of these organized groups had even received permission from the Division to legally use their skills in a professional way. There were even rumors of a small cadre of elite users who ran a detective agency and solved crimes by using their skills. They were based in Yokohama, from what I could remember.

At any rate, the Division oversaw and managed extremely dangerous skill users, and it even culled them if absolutely necessary. And at the top of that list of skill users was none other than the Homicide Detective, Yukito Ayatsuji.

The power to make his target die in an accident.

As long as certain conditions were fulfilled, he could flout all reason and lead people to their deaths.

There were many cases of powerful, dangerous skills as well. Some could blow up, shred, or even squish their enemies. Each one of these extraordinary powers were obviously dangerous and required caution—but that wasn’t enough to earn someone the title of Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User. Detective Ayatsuji’s skill ignored all physical barriers. It twisted probability in its favor and granted an “accidental” death to the target. It didn’t matter whether the target was on the other side of the world or had the most powerful skill capable of killing God himself. In a way, perhaps you could have even called it a “curse.”

There was no way to predict the cause of death. Suffocation, stroke, falling to one’s death, suicide, illness, heart attack—the list went on. Nor was there any way to prevent or cancel the “curse,” either. Furthermore, only one condition needed to be met to activate this skill: The target had to actually be found guilty of the crime committed.

You could even say it was a very detectivesque power. Detectives uncovered the truth, solved the case, and revealed the culprit. Only then did Ayatsuji’s deadly skill take effect.

And that was exactly why any proposal to kill this dangerous skill user had been turned down every time it was submitted to the higher-ups.

Nevertheless, a lethal skill with a 100 percent kill rate that couldn’t be defended against made him a rarity of rarities even among the other dangerous skill users on the Division’s watch list. On top of that, Detective Ayatsuji didn’t have the most agreeable personality, so the Division wasn’t confident whether it had him fully under their control. That was also why we received proposals to assassinate Detective Ayatsuji two to three times a week.

Would it kill the guy to be at least a little more docile and easier to grasp—?

“What are you staring at, Tsujimura? Do you actually want to become my maid? Is that it? Then go get changed. Your uniform is over there.”

“No, I don’t!”

But this was the kind of person he was. There was no telling where the joke started and where it ended.

And what’s he doing with a maid outfit anyway? Did he purchase it himself?

“Then what are you looking at me like that for? I understand that you’re supposed to keep an eye on me, but a security camera would be much more effective. It’d also be cheaper than paying you to watch me all day, and it wouldn’t babble on and on, to boot.”

“I’m aware. But a security camera can’t pester you for reports.”

“And that’s your added value, huh?”

“Just shut up and get me that report.”

“My, my…”

Detective Ayatsuji turned to his desk and began writing a report detailing the previous day’s case: the chain of events, the evidence he’d found, how he’d used it to identify the killer. Even the slightest details were vital for analyzing the mechanism behind the detective’s skill and what activated it; that’s exactly why the Division had him write these reports after every case.

Of course, it was my job to compile and submit all the paperwork. After every case, we had to negotiate with all those involved, consult with the military and city police, and then collect NDAs. At any rate, the detective was right. My job wasn’t being a security camera. My job was to oversee day-to-day operations, drive and guard the detective when he went out, and at times, act as his assistant when necessary to solve cases. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice, either. There was no one else who could do it, after all.

Therefore, I took a seat in a wicker chair, where I could still see Detective Ayatsuji out of the corner of my eye, and began inputting data on my laptop. A good agent could handle paperwork, monitor the detective’s every move, and guard him—but a top-class agent could execute all three tasks perfectly. The protagonist in that spy movie would say the same thing.

Incidentally, someone had proposed installing security cameras in Detective Ayatsuji’s agency, just like what the detective himself said to me. In fact, I heard some actually had been set up here, but Detective Ayatsuji broke most of them while making it look like an accident. He used the remaining cameras for his own purposes, so eventually, the entire idea got tossed out the window. That was this man in a nutshell.

The calico cat rubbed against my ankles a few times as it passed by.

“Finished.”

Detective Ayatsuji placed his fountain pen down, stood up, and handed me a stack of papers.

“You’re finished?” I repeated. “Already? Did you make sure to include every last detail?”

“Isn’t it your job to check and make sure?”

I began to go through his report one page at a time…then stopped at a certain page.

“Wait,” I said. “This last paragraph… What’s this about?”

An ominous passage caught my attention. All of a sudden, I got an eerie taste in my mouth.

“It’s not a riddle. What’s the problem? I thought reading was your forte, Agent Tsujimura.”

“I will punch you,” I growled. “Anyway, I’m talking about this here.”

I pointed at a single line in the report.

I would never be caught! He said so himself!

“The murderer said this…?” I wondered aloud.

The detective drew smoke into his mouth through his pipe, then slowly exhaled through his faintly parted lips. “You were there, too,” he replied.

“He threw me against the wall when he tried to escape. Remember?” I told him. “But I do vaguely remember him yelling something while he ran…”

My stomach did flips. It was like I’d just touched something rough and grainy in the dark, but I still had no idea if it was an elephant’s skin or the fangs of a terrifying monster.

“It was quite an indicative remark, yes. What of it?”

Detective Ayatsuji went back to his book.

“Don’t give me that,” I spat. “Doesn’t this mean there’s another person who knew about the crime beforehand?”

He didn’t respond but instead quietly turned the page.

“The city police searched his house after the incident, but it was strange. They found shockingly little to no proof that he’d planned the murder. Poisoning usually requires research, but his internet history was clean, and he’d never visited the library, either. In fact—”

“After a certain date, the teacher’s personal phone records went blank, along with all records of his after-work activity,” the detective interjected. “Right?”

I could tell my breathing was becoming shallower. He was exactly right.

“…Yes, there’s nothing from his final twelve days. You noticed?”

“Botulinum is one of the most potent toxins found in nature; making use of it for evil deeds requires specific expertise. You need to know how to culture it, store it, and apply the right dosage to keep it from dying out before the victim ingests it. And then you need to time it just right so that the bacteria can multiply into a lethal dose. It’s practically an art. No Japanese-language teacher could come up with all that on his own.”

Detective Ayatsuji glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. It was a sharp, icy gaze, reminiscent of an ice age.

“So? What conclusion did the Division reach?” he asked me.

“First, I want to hear your opinion, Detective Ayatsuji.”

He chugged the last bit of coffee in his cup and replied, “He must have had an accomplice. No…not an accomplice. An instigator—someone who taught him everything and pulled him down the path of evil.”

“An instigator…”

“Not only that, but they also erased any evidence of the crime and made sure to hide anything that would make them seem suspicious or even coincidentally hint that there was some sort of grand scheme. A ‘tutor of evil,’ someone who took care to instruct this man on how to commit the perfect crime. I don’t know who this person is yet…but we can surmise when they made contact with the murderer, yes?”

I almost automatically responded when I saw the look in his eyes. “Twelve days ago…”

“We need to look into everything the murderer did that day. But only if the Division is actually interested in doing the right thing, of course.”

I pondered for a few moments.

The man had committed the perfect crime using a naturally occurring toxin. Our investigation revealed that he was motivated by his hatred for the disrespectful student. Hitting the child would get him in trouble for abuse, so the culprit was extremely frustrated. He had the most mundane motive, something almost any teacher could sympathize with. But most teachers wouldn’t go so far as to fatally poison a child.

If only he’d never been taught how to commit the perfect murder…

“Twelve days ago…,” I said as I checked the data on my laptop. “There’s nothing particularly strange about the info we do have. After work, he ate dinner at his usual nearby greasy spoon. His car’s GPS showed that he got a little lost on the way home, but he took a rural route that had nothing but a barn and a well. It’s hard to believe anything happened there. And that’s the last of the car and phone records we got on him.”

“I’m impressed. The devil works fast, but the Division works faster.”

“Oh, thanks.”

“The agents other than you, I mean,” he added flatly.

I frowned. “Detective Ayatsuji.”

“What?”

“If you knew there was an instigator…why didn’t you tell us?”

“You’re right. That was careless of me. You have my sincere apologies,” he said with a shrug. “By the way, is it just me, or are your people always repeating the same lines? ‘Don’t go beyond your orders.’ ‘Don’t pursue unassigned cases.’ ‘Just stay on your leash and carry out your work, and be a good dog while awaiting further orders.’ Yesterday, I solved a murder case I was assigned. I identified the killer as ordered, and my skill condemned him. What more do you want? Or…”

“‘Or’…?”

He glared into space for a few moments in silence as if he would never say another word. Perhaps the missing continuation of his rant was destined to forever aimlessly float in space.

“Did you mention a ‘well’?”

“Huh?”

I had no idea what he was getting at.

“A well? Not a water reservoir or a simple pit? An actual well? You said he drove home on a road that had a well, right?” he asked rapid-fire.

I was taken aback. “Y-yes… I did, but…uh… What does that…?”

The detective suddenly hopped out of his chair and began marching forward without even glancing in my direction.

“Detective…?”

“Shut up.”

I felt like I’d been stabbed with an icicle. I kept what I was going to say to myself.

Detective Ayatsuji strode across the room and disappeared behind the door in the back of the office. I then heard his footsteps echoing down a staircase.

“Hey! Detective?”

That was when I remembered that those stairs led to the basement. I wasn’t supposed to take my eyes off the detective under any circumstances, so I hid my anxiety, stood up, and ran after him.

The black cat, now alone, meowed disinterestedly.

This wasn’t my first time here. I knew the layout of this building like the back of my hand. On the off chance that there was ever an attack or if I ever needed to know where the blind spots were for sniping, I memorized where the thickest walls were and the shortest route to the back door. I had personally investigated each room at least once—the least I could do as a professional.

The basement still creeped me out, though.

After descending the staircase and stepping inside, a cold breeze immediately brushed past my ankles before slipping away. The dim basement had a low ceiling, and it contained dolls of various sizes: antiques, replicas, ball-jointed dolls, the works. Some were small and made out of fabric and cotton, while others were life-size and so detailed that they looked like they were going to start moving at any moment. They all had their eyes closed and were sitting on the couch or in their case. There were even a few Japanese-style dolls on display.

The dim lighting must have been to prevent the dolls’ finish from discoloring. The floor was spotless, not a single speck of dust. Cold air was being pumped into the room, too.

Although I hadn’t been at this job for long, there was one thing I could say with confidence. Out of all the murder cases I’d seen, this was by far the most fitting location for a bizarre, grotesque murder.

The detective had his eyes closed. He was sitting in a sturdy wooden chair in the back with his hands clasped together and his chin resting on the tips of his thumbs. When I approached him to talk, he held up a finger—his way of telling me to be quiet. He apparently didn’t want anyone disturbing him while he was deep in thought.

At first, I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but I thought about it for a moment and decided to cut him some slack. I figured if I did him a favor this time, he’d eventually owe me one.

Instead, I quietly turned around and checked out the dolls. There were beautiful little girls, little boys, and animals—even one curious doll that seemed to be half man, half beast.

These dolls were a hobby of his. Some were rare antiques handmade by famous artists—one of only a few in existence, and thus, highly valuable. Even I could tell that each of these dolls were unique and not mass-produced. But coming from someone who’s only here on business, the fact that this man kept a doll sanctuary in his office basement was just downright creepy.

According to Detective Ayatsuji, “Dolls are far more intriguing than people. You never grow sick of them.”

Yikes.

“I just remembered,” the detective blurted out. He opened his eyes and seemed to focus on a single point in space. “Three days ago, at night, in an alley two blocks down the street, there was a tabloid magazine tossed away by the parking-lot dumpster.”

“Dumpster…? Tabloid?” I curiously tilted my head. “What does that have to do with this?”

“The well, obviously. Surely, you could have figured out that much by yourself,” the detective coldly replied. “I noticed an article in the tabloid when I was passing by. I barely paid it any mind at the time, and I forgot that I’d even seen it until now, but—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” I cut him off in a panic. “I mean, it’s incredible you even remembered an article in a tabloid you glanced at, but three nights ago? What were you doing walking around outside at that hour?! And how?! We have a whole platoon with eyes on the entire building all day long!”

“I was just in the mood for a walk by myself, so I slipped out and did exactly that,” he easily admitted. “Is there a problem?”

I almost fainted.

How can this guy believe that’s not an issue? It’s a big freaking deal.

I had seen the list of dangerous skill users before. There was one terrifying man who could shred anything within a few yards of where he was standing simply on a whim, but he was merely a grade 3 skill user—the third person from the bottom of the list. Detective Ayatsuji, meanwhile, was a Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User—leagues more dangerous. The difference was almost night and day. That was just how much of a threat the detective posed, and yet he’d somehow snuck out for a walk despite the heavy surveillance on him? How in the world—?

“The Division’s surveillance team is extremely talented, but when the sun sets, its glare makes it harder to look inside the building through the window. If you simulate that glare with another glass pane, it’s possible to easily slip out through the window without anyone knowing it’s open.”

I felt dizzy. If I relayed all this to the Division higher-ups, they’d force me to spend the next three days completely overhauling our entire surveillance system.

“But never mind that.” The detective suddenly changed the subject as if the issue was of little importance. “At any rate, that tabloid had an article about a certain well.”

“And…? What’s so special about that?”

Of course, wells weren’t common around these parts. You would probably have to head toward the mountains to see what remained of the wells that the locals used in the past. Regardless, I found it hard to believe that there was anything significant about a murderer passing by a well.

Of course, the fact that Detective Ayatsuji could remember some tabloid article from three nights ago proved that he had an astonishingly good memory. But why was he so fixated on that article now?

“The tabloid mainly covered street gossip and urban legends. Nothing worth reading. But one part of an article caught my eye—it went along the lines of…”

Detective Ayatsuji paused, then sharpened his gaze as if he were peering into my mind.

“…the well that turns you evil.”

He narrowed his eyes at me even more.

“Make a wish before it, and evil will be bestowed upon you by a divine power. No matter what crime you commit, you will never be punished.”

“‘Evil’…?”

I almost wanted to laugh in his face. It sounded ridiculous, like something out of a fairy tale. Besides, who in their right mind would pray to become evil? The concept alone was hilarious.

But I couldn’t laugh. I couldn’t even breathe. The air in the room was so tense that my throat became unbearably dry.

“Tsujimura, if you want to uncover the truth,” Detective Ayatsuji began from his chair, his eyes as chilling as ever, “then get permission from the Division. We’re off to find this well. And you never know… There may be evil spirits lurking inside it.”

He faintly smirked.

Detective Ayatsuji ended up being completely right. There actually was a well that turned people who prayed to it evil. And someone had done just that and committed an act of evil.

The detective was right about something else, too. While we were checking the well, we ran into something I could only describe as…

…an evil spirit.

The next day, the Ayatsuji Detective Agency received an official government request to investigate the mysterious well.