Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume SS1 - Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Marshland / Afternoon / Cloudy

The old well was near a swamp at the prefectural border. Some may have described it as serene; others would call it creepy. There was no sign of anyone nearby. The only things I could hear besides the thrushes chirping were the nearby trees rustling and the flowing river in front of me.

The well faced a small river at the end of a narrow crossroad. I couldn’t help but wonder why they’d decided to dig a well when there was a river right here. It didn’t make any sense to me. The well was most likely built a century or two ago, so maybe there wasn’t a river here back then? Or maybe the water wasn’t drinkable?

The logic behind it wasn’t important right now, though. We were here to find out how many murderers had visited this spot.

Detective Ayatsuji and I made our way to this well because of the rumors about it. The journey that led us here, to put it bluntly, hadn’t been a walk in the park. First, the detective had ordered me to find the publisher of the tabloid and interview the person who’d written the article. Little did I know that this journalist was going to be extremely talkative and slick. Fortunately, I still ended up getting a decent amount of information out of him.

“Sad to say, but I’m still researching that well,” the journalist muttered while sheepishly scratching the back of his head. “I wanted to look into it a little more before writing the article—but I’ve got a real boss from hell, if ya know what I mean.”

He stuck his index fingers up and placed them by his ears. I had no idea what he meant.

We were in the magazine company’s lounge. The journalist took a sip of his tea and added, “All I know for sure is that there’s something real fishy about that well by the Mizuha River. Somethin’ bad, real bad.”

“Bad?” I repeated.

“Real, real bad. I didn’t mention this bit in the article…” The journalist suddenly lowered his voice and melodramatically leaned forward over the table. “A lawyer friend of mine—don’t wanna say his name outta respect for his privacy and whatnot—anyway, he was hired for a murder case. Family of four died in a house fire. Only the husband, who just happened to be out at that time, survived. He ended up becoming a suspect, so he had this friend of mine represent him in court. Case ended up getting dropped due to lack of evidence, though.”

I furiously took notes as I listened to his story. A fire, family of four, charges against the husband dropped…

“But later, they went out for a few drinks, and the client apparently told my lawyer buddy that he’d gone to that well. Said this ‘giving well’ changed him, like he’d been reborn. That was when the lawyer was sure of it: This man killed his own family. Killed them and made it look like they died in a house fire.”

“What?!” I cried in spite of myself. “Then why wasn’t he found guilty?”

“Because the investigation concluded that their deaths were a complete accident,” the journalist said with a shrug. “Said it was a faulty kitchen fire. I got a peek at the report myself through one of my connections, and wow—talk about an open-and-shut case. No evidence of any wrongdoing or nothin’.”

I pondered for a few moments.

No signs of foul play… No one found guilty… It’s the perfect crime.

“The lawyer lost a lot of sleep over it, too.” The journalist wore a troubled frown. “After all, he had to honor confidentiality, even though his client had murdered his own family. Of course, my lawyer buddy’s already accepted long ago that this is simply the nature of his work. Anyway, he somehow managed to get his client drunk enough to admit what he’d done. I dunno if the guy felt guilty or what, but he basically confessed.”

“I see. And what exactly did that man do at the well?”

“Really wish I could help ya there…but my buddy wasn’t able to get that information out of the guy. Sure, he was the man’s lawyer, but no way the guy was gonna spill exactly how he’d forged a pact with this well to murder his family.”

“Where is this client now?”

“I looked into it, but the guy fled town after he got acquitted. Nobody knows where he went.”

That probably meant that finding him would be difficult…which meant that investigating the well itself would be the best place to start.

“But the fella did say something else, I hear,” he solemnly added. “It’s a well, but it’s also not a well. He called it a minishrine.”

“A shrine?”

That wasn’t something I was expecting to hear.

“You’re supposed to, like…offer it something. Pray to it seeking purification or whatever, and it’ll turn you into an evildoer.”

“It turns you into an evildoer…”

“The guy used to be a fireman. Saving people from fire, only to torch his own family…,” the journalist added with a gloomy expression. “Investigator.”

“Yes?”

Members of the Special Division for Unusual Powers were allowed to go by other titles during investigations. Right now, I was a special inspector for the military police.

“Please make things right. I might be a hack journalist who barely has two nickels to rub together, but even I know that this can’t be swept under the rug because there’ll be other victims. That much I’m sure of. So please do something before a real monster is born.”

Not knowing how to even respond to that, I hopelessly watched as the journalist placed his hands on the table and bowed for a few moments. Then I reluctantly assured him that I would make things right.

“…And that’s what happened.”

“I see,” Detective Ayatsuji replied indifferently after I filled him in.

“How did I do, Detective? Pretty impressive that I got all this information in a day’s time, right?”

“Yeah, impressively useless. I bet all you did was question this man. He basically rambled the entire time from the sound of it. What was his name?”

“I think it was Tori-something…”

“Can I get a round of applause for our incredible investigator?”

Before I could even argue with the detective, he had already started to briskly walk ahead. Obviously, I started to follow him…but then I immediately stopped.

The trees were rustling. The air was a little chilly. There wasn’t another soul at this well, but I still couldn’t help but feel like I was being watched. I started walking faster to catch up with the detective and rid myself of this creepy sensation.

“Hmph…,” the detective grunted before the well. “Intriguing.”

I peeked over the detective’s shoulder. The old concrete well was falling apart. The outside was wrapped with two decomposing shimenawa ropes, which made it seem somewhat religious. However, that was the only thing special about it. There wasn’t any secret password written anywhere, nor was there any mysterious creature with some sort of skill. In fact, I didn’t sense any skills. I wasn’t as talented as my seasoned mentor, but I was still a member of the Special Division. I knew how to sniff out special powers to an extent, so I could say with confidence that this was nothing more than an ordinary old well.

“A well at a crossroad by the river… Now things are getting interesting,” Detective Ayatsuji muttered to himself before pointing at the base of the well.

“Are those…bamboo leaves?” I said.

I approached the well and crouched. The ground was muddy from the rain and wind, but there was no doubt about it. These were large bamboo leaves.

“How many are there?” the detective asked me.

“One, two… Four, in total.”

“Four?” He frowned. “See anything else unusual down there?”

“Uh…”

I bent forward to observe the well, but all I could see around the bamboo leaves was mud. There was some black gravel speckled about here and there, and some large violet stones as well, but that was about it. I even peered into the well, which was considerably deep. To make matters worse, the branches overhead were blocking out the sun, making it hard to see the bottom. But I did notice that the old well had dried out long ago; it was empty except for some mud.

“That’s about it…I think.”

“That’s it? I guess that’s all you’re capable of,” the detective griped without batting an eye. “Take a better look at those purple stones. The ones by the river are pointier. You’d only see stones this worn farther downstream. Somebody must have brought these here.”

“What?”

I approached the stones and scrutinized them further. The ones near the bamboo leaves did indeed seem to be different. They were oddly round…and roughly the size of a human eye.

“How many are there in total?” Detective Ayatsuji asked.

“Uh… Six. I see six,” I replied after counting them with my fingers.

I searched a little farther from the well just to be sure, but those six were all of the stones.

For the next few moments, the detective stared off into space, until he suddenly asked, “Is there any salt?”

“Salt?”

Like the kind you eat?

I thought about asking him that, but I figured he would just insult me again. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and shifted my gaze toward the ground.

Salt…? All the way out here?

It had rained a few days ago—I couldn’t remember when exactly—so even the bamboo leaves were filthy. If there was any salt here, the rain would have buried it under the mud.

“I can’t tell.” I shook my head. “Why salt, though?”

“Seriously? What else goes with bamboo leaves and stones?”

I was just as confused as he was frustrated. What did salt have to do with bamboo leaves and stones? I was sure they had to be related somehow, like the detective claimed, yet I couldn’t help but be confused.

After a brief sigh, Detective Ayatsuji softly recited, “‘Be as the bamboo leaves, as green as they are. Wilted, as faded as they are. Once more, be like the salt, swelling and ebbing away. Like the rock, sinking and sinking.’”

He fell silent. A cold gust of wind whirled around him before passing by.

“What’s that…?” I asked.

“The context makes it pretty obvious that it’s a curse, right? The middle volume of the Kojiki tells the tale of the deity Akiyama-no-shitabi-otoko and a promise he failed to keep with his younger brother. Their mother becomes enraged and crafts a charm out of bamboo leaves, stones, and salt to inflict a curse upon the elder brother. He spends eight years languishing in illness and only recovers after begging his mother for forgiveness.”

“He should have apologized sooner, then,” I bluntly stated, saying what was on my mind. “But isn’t the Kojiki over a thousand years old? What does it have to do with this well?”

“You always ask the wrong questions. What’s important isn’t how they’re related. The intent is what’s important, and we need to check for salt before we can answer that.”

“But how are we supposed to find any salt if we can’t see—?”

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.” The detective coldly glared down at me. “What do you think that tongue of yours is for? Start licking.”

…What? The leaves?

He apparently noticed the look of disgust on my face, because his lips curled into a smug smirk.

For a brief moment—a split second—I considered requesting a job transfer.

The bamboo leaves were unsanitary, covered in mud and who knew what else? It didn’t help that I couldn’t remove any of it, either, since I needed to check for salt.

I lifted a leaf and glared at it as if it were my archnemesis. That was when I suddenly had an epiphany.

“Oh, hey,” I muttered. “How about we send this to forensics for testing?”

“You used your brain for a change.”

Detective Ayatsuji clicked his tongue with undeniable disappointment.

We continued to search the area around the well for clues, but not only were there no footsteps or belongings, there were also no signs of anyone ever having been here recently. It was all bamboo leaves and stones.

Was this well truly a shrine that could turn ordinary people into murderers? It wasn’t comforting that our one clue was a passage from the Kojiki.

As I surveyed the area, I glanced at the detective out of the corner of my eye. He was neither using a magnifying glass nor smoking from a pipe while deep in thought. Instead, he was simply tracing his finger around the rim of the well. He looked more like an architect gazing at his work than a detective. After a few moments, he pulled out a pocket watch and held it up to the sun.

He then extended his arm over the well as if he was trying to get a read on a spiritual presence. He remained perfectly still.

“Can you feel some sort of energy?” I asked. “Since when did you become a medium anyway?”

“Detective work would be much easier with spiritual powers.” His piercing gaze shot through me. “But nothing that convenient actually exists. Only the living can kill the living. In most cases, at least.”

“…?”

I promptly looked back at him, perplexed, but as always, his chilling expression didn’t change. He stared at the well in silence for a few more moments, then out of nowhere, he turned around and began walking away.

“D-Detective Ayatsuji?” I stammered.

“We’re done here. Let’s go.”

“We’re leaving…?” I rushed after him in a fluster. “But this is our only lead. Did you figure something out?”

“Nope. I’m at a complete loss.”

“You’re giving up?”

I was taken aback. I never expected to hear him say something like that.

“Yep.”

I picked up the pace, but the detective had a wide stride, so he covered a lot of ground even when at his normal gait. I had to basically jog to make sure I didn’t get left behind.

I always believed that the detective didn’t even know what giving up was, and I never expected we would ever leave without a single clue, either. But Detective Ayatsuji seemed to have lost all interest in the well. He walked into the distance, so I had no choice but to follow him.

We got into the car and went straight back to town, but the entire time, he kept his gaze forward as if he was staring at something. I couldn’t help but curiously glance in his direction while I drove, wondering what he was thinking about. Perhaps he was simply frustrated that he couldn’t find any clues. Maybe things like that happened to him from time to time. The root of great evil was right in front of us, but there was nothing we could do to reach it. Any potential clues remained hidden. Not even the gods knew the facts. Maybe this was just one of those days.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” I cheerfully suggested. “I’ll have forensics look into this… Besides, blaming those crimes on that well doesn’t even make any sense. It was just an ordinary old well. I even looked through the Division’s records, and there was nothing about a skill that turns people evil. I’m sure we’ll find other leads—”

“Other leads?” the detective suddenly muttered. “Tsujimura, do you honestly believe there are other leads? That well is the first and last clue we’ll get. The reason being that it’s a well.”

“What does that even mean…?” I tilted my head, my hands still on the steering wheel. “There are plenty of wells around the country. What makes this one so special?”

That reminded me: Why did he react so sensitively to the word well? Of course, I was interested in checking that well out because that journalist was so convinced it had something to do with the murders. But that was about the extent of my curiosity. The two murderers—the one from that school trip and the one who burned down his house and killed his family—had just happened to pass by the same well. That was nowhere near enough information to claim that this well was the root of all evil.

“Because bad things often come from wells,” he said with a faint scowl. “That’s why.”

“Bad things…? But…”

The journalist had said something similar.

“Are you familiar with the tale of the Dish Mansion?” the detective suddenly asked.

“Oh, uh… That old scary story?” I rummaged through my memories for details. “The one about a ghost who counts dishes every night only to find that there’s one missing.”

“That’s it. I’m no expert on the subject, so this is merely secondhand knowledge I obtained from a certain man, but the Dish Mansion was a common ghost story in both Kabuki and ballad dramas. There’s one from Himeji and Edo, along with various other strange tales all across Japan like in Tosa, Izumo, and Amagasaki.”

“O-oh…really?”

I had no idea that the legend had cropped up almost simultaneously across Japan. The country must’ve had a serious plate shortage back in the day.

“There is a common thread that runs along all these variations of the story: The ghost always emerges from a well. It never appears anywhere else. There are numerous other tales of ghosts emerging from wells, too. Many customs even deify wells. Some regions consider them sacred structures for worshipping water deities such as Mizuhanome. It was also widely believed that wells were a passageway between the spirit realm and ours. A Heian-era legend claims that the eminent imperial court official Ono no Takamura traveled every night through the realm of the dead via a well and into the depths of hell to assist Yama, the god of death.”

So a bureaucrat who moonlighted as a death god’s aide… Sounds like a real hard worker, in modern parlance.

“This particular well is at the end of a crossroad by a river on the prefectural border. It’s a boundary—a connection between two worlds, the source of numerous ancient ghost stories. In other words—a place where bad things come from.”

“So what you’re trying to say is…there’s something shady about that well?”

“At the very least, there is plenty to be suspicious about.”

I tilted my head. “Do you mean some ghost is behind all this? One that grants evil to those who offer it a prayer and then possesses them to commit murder…?”

That sent a shiver down my spine. I honestly didn’t want to work on this case anymore.

He shot me down in his usual tone. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

I was actually somewhat relieved.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts or the afterlife. At the very least, they have nothing to do with this case. I’m saying the criminal set this up to look like they’re related.”

“Somebody’s trying to make it seem like a ghost is behind this…?”

“Yes.” The detective stared out the window. “This person has a thing for wells.”

There was a mastermind behind this who liked wells and was making it seem like there was a ghost. I had a faint feeling that was the case, and there was no way I was going to miss my chance to ask the detective about it.

“Detective Ayatsuji, have you already…identified the criminal and the details of the crime?”

He didn’t immediately reply.

The light in front of us turned red, so I firmly pressed the brake. Several cars passed through the intersection.

But once the light turned green, the detective finally spoke up.

“Fear of the unknown—that’s what makes ghosts and spirits so frightening. There’s nothing mysterious about predictable setups and behavior. That’s the difference between skills and ghosts. Skills are a system and therefore not particularly eerie. The culprit knows this very well and is trying to use this simple fact to their advantage,” the detective explained while tapping his pipe. “I calculated the circumference of the well. One circuit around the rim is approximately ninety-one inches. Divide this by the first three digits of pi, and you get the diameter: roughly twenty-nine inches. Now, if you spread your arms across the rim and adjust your eyes’ position so that the diameter of the bottom of the well and the length of your fingers are the same, then you can triangulate the well’s depth. My thumbs are about two inches long, and my eyes and hands are around thirteen inches apart. A little mental math tells me that the well is about a hundred sixty inches deep. Not an exact number, but close enough.”

I was bewildered, to say the least.

Come to think of it, I did remember him tracing the well with his fingers and holding his hand over it.

So he wasn’t trying to speak with the spirits—he was trying to measure the distance to the bottom. But why…?

“Also, there were six round stones and four bamboo leaves, and those numbers aren’t random. Based on the old twelve-interval time system, the bell would ring four times at the sixth interval, or the snake hour, which gave it the name the fourth dawn. That corresponds to around ten o’clock in the morning.”

The sixth interval… Four bells… The numbers matched.

“This time of year, the sun is at an angle of about sixty-eight degrees during the snake hour. You remember learning about sine and cosine? The well’s diameter is twenty-nine inches, and the depth is a hundred sixty inches. When the sun is shining overhead at a sixty-eight-degree angle, light can reach eighty-eight inches into the well. Search the vicinity during the snake hour tomorrow. There’s bound to be something.”

I couldn’t reply immediately. Detective Ayatsuji didn’t look like he’d been doing anything back at the well, but it turned out that he’d been calculating all this in his head.

“But why would someone plant that kind of a gimmick at a well?”

“To add to the mystery and make it seem magical, of course. Call it a behind-the-scenes trick, if you will. Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is, after all. What did that journalist say about the well?”

“Um…” I thought back to our conversation before answering, “He said it was a minishrine that turns its visitors evil.”

“This is the trick I mentioned.” He closed his eyes. “It’s a code—the well doesn’t grant evil; it’s a test to see who has the knowledge and courage to commit evil. A hint eighty-eight inches into the well leads to the next location and yet another puzzle, and only after clearing the last obstacle do you learn how to commit the so-called perfect crime. Anyone who goes through all that trouble will need the right equipment and the wherewithal to get themselves and one other person covered in mud. That requires guts, brains, and desperation. But when you really think about it, that’s the exact kind of person who can figure out the hints to commit the perfect crime…and become ‘evil’ itself.”

I was utterly dumbfounded.

The well was neither a shrine nor a gate to the spirit world but a testing ground? In other words, all the murderers had overcome these obstacles? Of course, anyone who passed wouldn’t tell a soul about the test—otherwise, it wouldn’t be the perfect crime anymore, and blabbing ran the risk of someone turning you in. That must be why it was nothing more than vague rumors. Everyone who went to this well committed acts of evil, but the rest of what happened was unknown.

“We need to solve the riddle of the well’s perfectly designed system,” Detective Ayatsuji said. “Then we have to stop whatever its creator is trying to accomplish. If we don’t act quickly, we’ll see more cases like the botulinum poisoning—unsolved crimes will spread like a contagion. We have to find out who’s behind this and what they’re after as soon as possible, or this country’s murder rate will multiply by the hundreds.”

As his prediction eerily resonated within the car, I found my entire body overcome with itchy anxiety. Who made this system and for what reason? There were countless important questions swelling in my chest.

“Wait…”

But what I ended up asking was far from important.

“You gave up on investigating the well earlier…but now I can’t help wondering… You just didn’t want to get yourself muddy, did you?!”

“Take one of your colleagues with you tomorrow and get your hands dirty.” He smiled ever so slightly. “I look forward to your performance, Ms. Detective’s Assistant.”

Yukito Ayatsuji was walking down a narrow alleyway. No words were spoken, nor was there anyone for him to even share a word with. The sky was blue, and the tall buildings were even bluer. Wispy streaks of clouds roamed across the sky at the same pace as the withered leaves drifting west.

Ayatsuji’s eyes were cold. Even the sunlight reflecting off the buildings couldn’t warm them. After he turned the corner, he took a path next to what was left of an old, seedy construction site. The Division’s sniper team must be losing their mind right now, since the Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User whom they were supposed to be watching had disappeared yet again. After all, it was only the other day that they’d taken steps to prevent their target from escaping through the window with the double-window trick, so someone was probably going to lose their job. And yet, Ayatsuji had still snuck out. That was just how important this was.

It was a gut feeling that he couldn’t ignore.

Standing tall on his right side was a wire-mesh fence most likely there to prevent people from stealing machinery from the construction site. Coiled around the top of the fence was barbed wire; not even someone as tall as Ayatsuji would be able to clear it safely.

There were no signs of anyone in the construction site. Ayatsuji was the only one walking this path. Even when he passed that place, there was nobody there.

“It’s been a while, Ayatsuji,” came a voice from the depths of hell. “Marvelous job on that well case.”

But Ayatsuji didn’t turn around. He stopped in his tracks, slowly blinked twice, took in a deep breath, then exhaled. He clenched his fists, opened them again, and closed his eyes…because he needed time to get the words out.

“So it was your doing after all… Do you have any idea how much I despised quoting the Kojiki?”

Ayatsuji looked to his side. Sitting there was a dimpled-cheeked man wearing ragged, traditional Japanese attire, with a millennium of knowledge behind his mud-brown eyes. He possessed no shadow as if he was some sort of ghost from where he sat on the other side of the fence atop an old, moss-covered rock.

“I’m glad my class came in handy for you,” the older gentleman said with the calmest of smiles.

“You never cease to disgust me, Kyougoku.” Ayatsuji narrowed his gaze. “How about I call the Division and have one of their platoons throw you an exclusive fireworks show?”

Ayatsuji grabbed onto the mesh fence and glared at the man. The metal creaked and vibrated.

“You know how pointless that would be, Ayatsuji,” Kyougoku said, cackling. “I came here prepared, you see. I’m too much of a coward not to.”

Ayatsuji narrowed his eyes even more. “You said it atop that waterfall—that compared with your so-called ceremony, the battle up until now was only the unveiling. And then you threw yourself off the cliff.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Indeed, I was quaking in my boots then. It was my first taste of death, after all.” Kyougoku serenely smiled.

The battle between Yukito Ayatsuji and Natsuhiko Kyougoku had reached its conclusion two months ago at the top of the waterfall—or at least, it should have. There was no way to escape Ayatsuji’s skill, which killed criminals through various accidents without fail, and yet…here Kyougoku was.

“…”

Ayatsuji quietly observed the shadowy figure on the other side of the fence. If any ordinary person had seen Ayatsuji right now, their intestines would begin to convulse, sending them into violent fits of vomiting. His eyes didn’t hide his murderous intent, which was as sharp as a carefully prepared scythe.

“It seems killing you isn’t going to be enough to stop you.” Ayatsuji wasn’t even attempting to hide his hostility. A chill escaped his throat, practically freezing the air and shattering it. “Very well. I’ll play your little game, Sorcerer. Let’s see what this ‘ceremony’ is all about. It should keep me entertained for at least a short while.”

“That’s the spirit,” Kyougoku replied, smirking once more. Then he seemed to have remembered something. “Countless human lives are resting on your efforts. Do keep up the hard work.”

If the man who created this system wasn’t stopped, then the rate of homicides in this country would surely increase until it was hundreds of times higher than any other country in the world.

Ayatsuji thought back to what he’d told Tsujimura. He had to find out what Kyougoku was after, uncover what this so-called ceremony was, and stop him. Only then could he finally put this feud between them to rest.

“Have you heard of the mizuchi?” Kyougoku suddenly asked with a raised eyebrow.

“The ‘mizuchi’?”

“The oldest account claims it is a dragon-like beast that resides near the Kawashima River in the ancient province of Kibi. It also appears in Volume Sixteen of the Man’yoshu in Prince Sakaibe’s poem as well as in the Wajinden. The creature takes various names and forms, but it is essentially a sort of water-dwelling serpent or a semidragon that resides in water. That will be your next opponent.”

“A serpent?” Ayatsuji muttered an octave lower. “Are you saying a snake is going to kill someone?”

“Precisely. Sounds exciting, yes?” Kyougoku shrugged. “The next sacrifice will be devoured by the mizuchi that crawls out of that well. This is what you might call a harbinger of murder. What will you do, Homicide Detective? Not even you are capable of slaying such a monstrous creature.”

He was announcing the next victim. A serpent was going to slither out of the well and eat someone.

“Of course, it had to be a well.” Ayatsuji sighed and closed his eyes. “So there’s yet another killer who was gifted that wisdom of yours.”

“Perhaps.”

“You disgust me,” Ayatsuji spat. “Very well. Allow me to give you a warning of my own. Next time, I’ll take much more care in killing you.”

“High praise, coming from you.” Kyougoku grinned with clear amusement. “Now, allow me to usher in a couple of guests to launch this new little game of ours. Consider it a small token from me to you. Turn around.”

Ayatsuji quickly did an about-face and noticed a shadowy figure in the back of the alleyway—two shadowy figures: a man and a woman, each with pistols in their trembling hands.

“A-are you—Mr. Ayatsuji?” the man asked.

Ayatsuji didn’t reply.

Standing there were a man wearing a suit and glasses and a woman with shoulder-length hair. Both looked to be in their late thirties or so—two average, everyday people. They had rings on their left ring fingers, so it was safe to assume that they were married.

“Yousuke, I…I can’t do it,” the woman stammered. She wiped the tears running down her cheeks with her hand that was holding the gun.

“Don’t worry, Ritsuko. There’s nothing to be afraid of. We just need to do as we were told,” the man replied, trying to smile through his tears, his breathing shallow.

Ayatsuji observed the couple and immediately reached a single conclusion. They didn’t come here to shoot him. They were here because—

“Drop your weapons,” Ayatsuji growled.

“A man who never told us his name…paid for an operation one of our daughters needed,” the trembling man explained through clenched teeth. “And then he said that he’d pay for our other daughter’s surgery if we did exactly as he told us.”

“Yousuke, I’m so s-scared. I really can’t…” The wife closed her eyes, tears dripping off her chin.

“It’s okay, Ritsuko. We chose to do this for our children, didn’t we?” the husband assured her. “Come on… Let’s do it.”

The shivering couple standing right before Ayatsuji…pointed their pistols at the other’s head.

“Stop,” Ayatsuji demanded, baring his teeth and stepping forward. Swirling in his eyes was rage unlike anything he had ever felt before. “Drop your weapons. This is nothing more than a game to that man. He’s playing with your lives.”

“We know,” said the husband. The couple smiled as they wept and trembled. “But this isn’t a game to us. Ready, Ritsuko?”

“Oh God… Yes, I’m ready…”

They tightly shut their eyes.

“Don’t…!” Ayatsuji shouted. He dashed forward, reaching for their guns. But he was too late.

The couple simultaneously pulled their triggers, shooting the other in the head.

Dark-red blood and brain matter littered the alleyway and painted the walls a fresh crimson. The couple, who’d each lost half of their face, had flown in opposite directions from the impact before promptly dropping to the ground. All that remained were lifeless sacks of meat, leaving only Ayatsuji’s long, still shadow.

“Blood is without substance, and thus a thing of beauty. Even more so if it sprays forth in a crimson blizzard born of love.”

“Kyougoku…!!”

“I’m a researcher, so of course, I looked into your skill thoroughly. It can’t recognize ‘someone who paid for surgery’ as a criminal, can it now?”

Ayatsuji punched the fence as hard as he could, but Kyougoku had already vanished.

“Yes, that’s the face, Ayatsuji… That’s the face I wanted to see. Until we meet again. Do look forward to my sorcery.”

Kyougoku’s voice echoed down the alleyway before eventually vanishing as well. Ayatsuji stood alone in silence, squeezing the fence so hard that his hands began to bleed.

Dark-red blood slowly filled the alleyway.

The news almost instantly reached the Special Division, so I was summoned to the Ministry of Home Affairs and forced to explain. Of course, there wasn’t a single question I could answer. I had no idea that monster, Kyougoku, was still alive. He was supposed to have fallen to his death—how was he still breathing? His body was never found, but numerous organizations had conducted thorough investigations, and no one could’ve survived a fall from the top of that waterfall.

Kyougoku should have died at the hands of Detective Ayatsuji’s skill—in a fatal “accident.” Nobody had ever escaped his skill before.

My mentor, Sakaguchi, had been wearing a stern expression in silence ever since we stepped inside the Ministry of Home Affairs’ white building. Only after leaving and returning to our base did he finally say a word to me:

“Start gathering as much information as you can.”

And that was it. I told him I would get it done, and I meant it. After all, I did have an idea on how I could get some more information.

Eighteen hours after that, I was at a sewage-treatment plant in the suburbs. With a stack of documents in one hand, I leaned against the wall. The place was quiet, and only the large moving machinery filled that void of silence.

Modern sewage plants were very clean. Not only did it lack the putrid smell of foul water, but the walls weren’t splattered with filth, either. The place was hygienic, simplistic, and completely empty. The closest worker was in an office about a mile away and controlling the sewage treatment through a computer, which meant there was no need for any on-site staff.

It was the perfect place for a secret rendezvous. There was no one else in this hallway, no spots that could be bugged, no place to hide and eavesdrop. The only things that stood out were the chemical transport pipes halfway buried into the wall. Other than that, the place was bare.

It felt almost like I was in a spy movie, which gave me goose bumps. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so anxious if this really was a movie, though. In spy films, the hero always defeated evil in the end. The sole difference between these movies was how the hero won.

But my situation was far different. I couldn’t even picture myself defeating that monster.

I heard clicking footsteps in the distance.

“Quite the place you chose,” joked a cold, deep voice. “Only an also-ran focuses on the backdrop, Ms. Secret Agent.”

A shadowy figure appeared from behind the door down the hallway.

“Detective Ayatsuji,” I muttered.

“You should thank your colleagues a little more. Did you not even consider how much your sniper unit would panic the moment they realized that I left the agency alone and took a taxi? This better be worth it.”

“We found a code inside the well,” I reported, lifting up the files in my hand.

“Oh?”

I saw him raise an eyebrow behind his sunglasses.

After opening the folder, I showed him the files and continued, “You were right. There were three thin, deep cracks in the well that are only visible in the late morning, when there’s enough sunlight overhead to see that far down. Stuffed inside each crack were pieces of plastic I managed to pull out with some tweezers. Each piece had several tiny numbers written on them. I have some enhanced photos of them here.”

I pointed at a page in the documents, which the detective immediately grabbed to take a closer look.

978-0-.

5-19-1.

198-57.

Those were the combinations found on the pieces of plastic in the photograph that Detective Ayatsuji was staring at. He narrowed his eyes.

“I disposed of all the plastic in the well, so that should put an end to the ‘perfect’ crimes. I also have surveillance on the well now—”

“That won’t help,” the detective cut in. “I highly doubt that’s the only well. There are probably multiple other haunted locations, too.”

“‘Haunted’?”

“Yes.” He shot me a brief but sharp glance. “At least, he has a reason for wanting people to think they’re haunted. Reasons that are still unknown to me.”

I nodded. There was no way to comprehend what that phantom was thinking. All I knew was that we couldn’t let him get away with this, or there would be more victims.

“These pieces of plastic must be some sort of code, right?” I said.

“Right.”

“And deciphering them should bring us one step closer to catching him, right?”

“Right.”

“The Division’s cryptanalysis team is working on deciphering the code, and they’re using special software on it as we speak. But they haven’t solved it yet. It should only take them a few more days, though.”

“A few days?” Detective Ayatsuji lifted his head. “I’ve already figured it out.”

“Huh?” I couldn’t even process what he was saying at first. “Already…? As in just now?”

“Why are you all bug-eyed like a goldfish? It wasn’t that hard.” He flicked the photo in the files. “Don’t overthink it. Use your brain a little.”

I looked down at the code once more.

978-0-.

5-19-1.

198-57.

Each code had been hidden in a different crack in the well, and this might not even be the correct order. They could be independent of one another, or they could even be combined into a single succession of digits.

I’d briefly attempted to crack the code when I first saw the files, but absolutely nothing came to mind. “5-19-1” could’ve been a date and time—May 19 at one o’clock—but the others didn’t look like dates at all. Maybe it’s an alphabetic cipher? The “5” would be e, “19” would be s, and the “1” would be a. But then…what would that make “198-57”? There weren’t that many letters in the alphabet, so that obviously wasn’t the right answer…

“People love code-deciphering games, but their biggest mistake is thinking that all codes can be solved with the same technique. Here, give me the files again,” Detective Ayatsuji softly demanded as he took the papers out of my hand. “This is a single, unique combination of digits. The ‘978-0-’ part ends with a hyphen—highly unusual, which made it easy to figure out that it was the first set of digits. By the way, the correct order is ‘978-0-,’ ‘198-57,’ ‘5-19-1.’ All you need now is a little knowledge.” He then pointed at one of the photos. “Everything comes down to the first ‘978.’ It makes sense that a Japanese-language teacher managed to figure it out. This is the prefix added to the ISBN codes in every published book.”

“‘Book’? Like…the kind you read?”

“What other kinds are there?” he replied while shooting me a cold glance. “This is an international standard book number. No two books share the same one. ISBNs used to be composed of ten digits, but in 2007, that was changed to thirteen digits out of concern that they would run out of unique numbers. Those three extra digits are ‘978.’ Almost all recent books have these printed on the back cover over the barcode.”

“Then this code sequence…”

“It corresponds to a book with the ISBN 978-0-198-575-19-1. The first three digits are the prefix that all books have, while the ‘0’ identifies the language—in this case, English. The following ‘198-575-19’ identifies the publisher and title; the ‘1’ at the end of the ISBN is a randomly allocated check digit, which is always a single digit. Therefore, the ‘5-19-1’ sequence had to come at the end. Put simply, this is an ISBN for an English-language book. We should easily be able to find it if we search online.”

I hastily pulled out my cell phone and contacted the Division. It took only a few seconds to prove that the detective was right. I promptly thanked my colleague and hung up.

“All right, we got our book. The publisher is Oxford University Press,” I said, facing Detective Ayatsuji. “It’s the first edition of The Selfish Gene written by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976.”

“Oh? Interesting.” The detective knitted his brow. “That’s a famous educational book on biology… I’m surprised, though. After the incident at the well, I was expecting something on folklore or spiritual traditions.”

“What kind of book is it?”

“In the simplest terms, it’s a treatise on genes and memes.”

“‘Memes’?”

“It’s just basic biology. Genes copy themselves by multiplying, and this information is passed down to the next generation. Memes are replicated by transmission of information and similarly passed down. The book aims to define genes and memes and argue how both of them work.”

Transmission?

Genes are passed on from parent to child—that much I understood, but I’d never heard of memes.

“Specifically, with things like religion, culture, language, and ethics. For example, Santa Claus doesn’t really exist; he’s ‘transmitted’ and ‘replicated’ by people and media to the point that you can see and hear about him all across the world just like any living thing. But Santa Claus isn’t transmitted through genes. He’s a ‘life-form’ known as a meme, which replicates and passes down its ‘DNA.’ Religions and cultures remain commonplace for millennia because information can replicate and transmit itself just like DNA. The Selfish Gene pioneered this meme theory.”

I nodded. “I think I…somewhat…get the gist, but I’d appreciate it if you could go into a little more detail later.”

He regarded me with a cold stare. “Tsujimura, why do you think I was able to decipher the code so easily? Because I purposefully made sure to remember this information about ISBNs, something that would go in one ear and out the other for most people. This small detail is what makes you and me different. The Selfish Gene is a basic educational book that’s been translated into many languages. Give it a read sometime.”

“Ngh.”

After he glared at me for a few more seconds, he asked, “Are you growling?”

“Oh, no. I was just groaning a little out of shame.”

“I see,” the detective replied. “I was worried you were going to start barking at me for a second there.”

Just then, the door that Detective Ayatsuji came through earlier opened.

“Was this our rendezvous point?” asked a man in a suit.

“Inspector Asukai,” I began, facing the man. “Thank you for coming all this way.”

He wore a hat and black leather gloves—it was Inspector Asukai, clasping his hands and approaching us. Despite his burly build, he moved almost silently and carried himself gracefully.

“Sorry I’m late, Tsujimura. I know this doesn’t make up for it, but I brought you a souvenir from Kyoto. I went last week during my time off.”

“Uh…”

He smoothly reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a pack of pickled vegetables, and handed them to me. I instinctively accepted them. The vacuum-sealed pack wasn’t even gift wrapped or in a bag.

“Long time no see, Detective Ayatsuji.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

Inspector Asukai bowed to the detective before pulling out another pack of pickled vegetables like it was nothing.

“A souvenir for you, too, Detective.”

Unfazed, Detective Ayatsuji placed a pipe between his lips. It didn’t look like he was going to accept the gift.

“I’ve finally grown accustomed to your strange antics, but I’m still not a fan of pickled vegetables.”

“Oh my. That so?”

“Yep… The pickles you gave me seventeen months ago weren’t bad, though.”

Inspector Asukai bowed once more and nimbly pulled yet another bag of pickled food from his pocket.

“Here.”

“You have more of them?”

The detective reluctantly accepted it.

What’s going on with those pockets of his?

“I should’ve asked you before I got you this souvenir, Tsujimura, but do you have a favorite kind of pickled food?”

Inspector Asukai dug into his pocket as he approached me, so I immediately let him know that I was fine with anything.

“Hmph. So your informant is this fermentation freak?” Detective Ayatsuji said.

“That’s right.” I nodded. “Inspector Asukai is a special high-level inspector for the military police who’s been pursuing Kyougoku cases for years. You could say that he’s overseen pretty much everything our investigations into Kyougoku have uncovered.”

These top-level agents—they were the real pros who always fought crime on the front lines. Unlike secret organizations like the Special Division for Unusual Powers, which remained and worked behind the scenes, he was a professional who always took command on the front line and went after even the most heinous of criminals, regardless of jurisdiction or turf. It took far more than a little bit of guts and resilience to do what he did.

“Inspector Asukai, I apologize for bothering you when you must be extremely busy, but I have a few questions.”

“I’m assuming this has to do with that one case, yeah?” he said, crossing his burly arms. “I heard what happened, Detective Ayatsuji. He’s back, huh? It’s truly bizarre. I was sure you killed him two months ago at that waterfall.”

“Yeah, I killed him, but that’s apparently not enough to stop him,” the detective quietly replied as he took a puff from his pipe.

“Yes, it’s about that,” I began. “If you don’t mind, Inspector Asukai, could you tell us about the investigation at the waterfall?”

“You’re curious? Sure, I’ll tell you everything I know.” Inspector Asukai narrowed his eyes. “To get straight to the point, we never found a body, but there’s no doubt that Kyougoku died.”

He paused, then glanced at us to gauge our reaction.

“You never found the body?” Detective Ayatsuji asked.

“That we did not.” Asukai pulled out a cigarette and shifted his gaze to the detective. “Mind if I smoke?”

The detective closed his eyes and lifted his chin just barely enough to make his intentions clear. After receiving the go-ahead, Asukai lit the cigarette and continued:

“I received a call from the Division early the night twelve people died at that museum out of town. They said they found the criminal and needed our help nabbing him, so we immediately surrounded that waterfall based on the information we had. Soon after that, we learned that the man behind these murders, Kyougoku, had fallen off the waterfall.”

I nodded. I could still clearly remember that evening.

It was a horrible incident. Twelve people were locked in a museum and started killing one another. One of the twelve was actually a ferocious serial killer who gouged out the eyes of their victims—or at least, that was the false information that the other eleven people were fed. Each one of them began to doubt the other until even the most trivial of matters began to set them off. It wasn’t long before the entire situation developed into a bloodbath. Museum security footage showed people killing one another with kitchen knives and fire pokers until only one person remained, but even this last survivor ended up slaughtered.

Ayatsuji figured out Kyougoku was the instigator and chased him down until they had their final encounter at the top of the waterfall. When Kyougoku realized that all was lost, he threw himself off the falls. At least, that was what I was told.

“When I heard that Kyougoku fell off that waterfall, I immediately considered the possibility that this was all some sort of charade to help him escape,” Asukai admitted. His eyes began to focus on the burning tip of his cigarette. “Because you can never be too sure, even if he had fallen off the tallest building in the world. I wouldn’t let my guard down if he’d fallen right into the middle of a bushfire. This is Kyougoku we’re talking about, after all. Therefore, I ordered my men to completely cordon off the entire area. No stone was left unturned. After every path and secret passage was sealed off, we slowly began to close in on the waterfall.”

I’d seen that much for myself, since I’d rushed over as soon as I got the news. There was no way anyone would have been able to break through their encirclement. The Division’s trackers were sent in as well. Even if Kyougoku could fly or burrow into the earth, the Division was experienced enough to handle that. Besides, Kyougoku’s skill had already been confirmed, and it wasn’t something that could physically interfere with the outside world, so there was no way he’d suddenly disappeared from that waterfall. There were no signs of him having any outside help, either.

When I brought this all up with Asukai, he ended up agreeing as well.

“I am very familiar with crimes involving skills due to my line of work, and Kyougoku’s skill wouldn’t have been much help to him under the circumstances. That much, I can say with confidence. His ‘spirit possession’ skill doesn’t work on the physical world.” Asukai glanced at Detective Ayatsuji. “Isn’t that right, Detective?”

The detective nodded with his eyes alone.

“That waterfall is extremely dangerous. Even with some sort of secret backup plan in motion, I still wouldn’t risk falling from that high up on the off chance that it’d work,” Inspector Asukai said as he shoved the tip of his cigarette into a portable ashtray. “The cliff isn’t just a long drop. There are numerous boulders protruding from the cliffside the whole way down. The waterfall basin is impressively deep, too, and the current is far too strong for an amateur to be able to swim to safety. In fact, I tried it out myself just to see and almost drowned.”

“Well… What about a cave or a secret passage hidden behind the waterfall?”

Asukai snickered at my question. “We checked. There was no secret passage. We went on a large-scale mountain hunt in search for a body after that, you know? Even dropped a crash test dummy off the top of the waterfall, and it shattered into pieces.” He looked to the detective and lit another cigarette. “Do you have any idea how he survived and got past us, Detective?”

“Beats me,” was Ayatsuji’s blunt reply.

Kyougoku had done the impossible. He’d survived the fall and escaped from the waterfall basin. There was no telling how he’d been able to pull off such an unbelievable trick.

“Hey, can I say something?” I quietly asked. “To tell the truth, I’m actually not that surprised that Kyougoku vanished at the waterfall.”

Asukai looked at me. “Really? Did you figure out how he did it, then?”

“No… Not quite.” It would’ve been really cool if I did, though. “But he’s exactly the kind of person who would be able to figure out how to disappear from a waterfall that’s surrounded by cops. I mean, compared with all those perfect crimes, vanishing from a waterfall basin seems almost pedestrian. This is the man who’s managed to leave behind zero evidence.”

Without leaving a trace of evidence, he had twelve people kill one another. He turned the CEO of a large company into a maniac who killed their own employees, and he even somehow managed to release numerous well-known serial killers from jail simultaneously.

They called him many terrifying things: the Sorcerer, the Black Mage, the Puppet Master, et cetera. But to me and the Special Division, he was public enemy number one.

“One thing caught me off guard,” I mentioned as I shot the detective a glance. “Kyougoku was hit by Detective Ayatsuji’s skill and lived. That alone makes him quite unusual.”

Inspector Asukai frowned as if he was deep in thought. Detective Ayatsuji fixed his gaze on me.

The skill that led to accidents claiming the lives of criminals…

An unavoidable fate…

A Special A-Grade Dangerous Skill User…

To borrow Detective Ayatsuji’s words, skills were a system. They were eternal truths the world was bound to; there was no escaping the rules they followed. The only way around them would be to trigger a singularity with some other skill—

“Singularity.” I gasped. “Maybe he created a singularity with his skill and canceled out Detective Ayatsuji’s skill? But that’s—”

“A singularity? What’s that?” Asukai curiously tilted his head.

“Huh?” My heart skipped a beat. “Did I say something just now?” I tilted my head to the side as well and smiled.

Skill singularities were among the topics of top secret research at the Special Division.

I thought back to my boss’s explanation:

“We have reports of multiple skills interacting with one another and, on extremely rare occasions, working in wild, unpredictable ways,” he told me one day. “For example, imagine two people with the skill to always strike first. Let’s say they get in a fight. What happens then? Or if there’s someone with the skill to always trick their opponent, but their opponent has the skill to always see the truth… What then? The answer is you won’t know unless you try it out. Usually, one skill will trump the other, but in extremely rare cases, the two skills end up creating a new phenomenon altogether. The Division calls this a ‘singularity.’”

I had never seen such a thing with my own two eyes, and I heard that almost no one had ever witnessed such an event, even within the Division. Nevertheless, this was the only way I could imagine someone getting past Detective Ayatsuji’s supposedly unavoidable skill.

Of course, it was hard to imagine a skill that could conflict with Ayatsuji’s “certain death” ability. I heard there was someone at a private detective agency in Yokohama with the uncanny ability to “cancel” other people’s skills. Even that wouldn’t have stopped Kyougoku’s accidental death, though, because Detective Ayatsuji’s skill had already exacted its judgment.

My eyes naturally wandered toward Detective Ayatsuji for a hint, but he was staring silently into the distance, his mind seemingly elsewhere. Our discussion didn’t appear to interest him in the least.

“True, it is odd that Detective Ayatsuji’s skill didn’t kill him,” Asukai said. “I remember being on the scene at the seventeen-victim massacre on Reigo Island five years ago. In the blink of an eye, Detective Ayatsuji killed seventeen criminals with his skill, each in a different accident. The horrifying things I saw there… They’re burned into my eyes forever.”

Five years ago, a murder took place on the small island of Reigo when Detective Ayatsuji happened to be there. He ended up solving the case, brutally murdering the seventeen people who’d planned the crime. His skill caused more deaths than the Reigo Island murder itself did, which led the government to mark the detective as a Special A-Grade threat.

As for me…I had close ties to that incident as well.

“The past is in the past,” Detective Ayatsuji said as he tapped his pipe. “Either way, Kyougoku’s going to make another move soon. What’s important right now is how we handle it. Asukai.”

“Yes?”

“Remove yourself from this case,” Detective Ayatsuji demanded with the most natural of tones. “Let me and the Division handle the rest. This is beyond the purview of an ordinary person like you.”

“…An ordinary person?” Asukai raised an eyebrow. “Me…?”

“I’m simply stating facts.” The detective shot Asukai a piercing gaze. “You’re a talented investigator. You are a law-abiding, morally upright, and persistent man. And that’s exactly who he’ll target next—someone who is bound by rules and easy to predict. You won’t even realize you’re being manipulated. Are you confident you could keep your wits about you under his spirit possession?”

“I am.” Asukai firmly stared back into Detective Ayatsuji’s eyes. “I wouldn’t be doing this job if I wasn’t.”

“Despite knowing that this man has driven nearly a hundred people to their deaths with his skill?”

“Detective Ayatsuji.” Asukai took a step forward. “You know why I’m pursuing him. He killed my partner. He tore her limb from limb. That’s a fact.”

“…”

I didn’t know all the details, but Asukai’s partner, Yui, was a special top-level agent who died pursuing Kyougoku. We believed Kyougoku was behind it, but as usual, there wasn’t a single piece of evidence to pin on him.

“I must admit, though. I really respect you, Detective Ayatsuji.” The muscles in Asukai’s chin tensed as he took yet another step forward. “You may be dangerous, but you have a gift. Your skill always kills the criminal. You said I’m a law-abiding man, but you’re wrong there. I don’t plan on arresting Kyougoku. The moment I find him, I’m going to kill him.”

Asukai then inhaled, held his breath, and added:

“And I’m going to do it before you can.”

After the detective listened in silence, he took a puff from his pipe, exhaled some smoke, and replied, “Let’s see it, then.”

That was when a dry, rattling metallic sound echoed down the hallway.

I immediately looked down in search of what was causing it, only to find a cylindrical object made out of some sort of silvery, shiny metal. It was around the size of a can of coffee. One end of the cylinder was spherical, which made it appear almost as if it was some sort of massive bullet. It looked extremely familiar… Where had I seen one of these before?

That was when off-white smoke suddenly began shooting furiously out of the can.

“…Gas grenade!” Asukai shouted like a hawk.

The next instant, flashing lights and thunderous bangs came from the other end of the hallway. It was gunfire. By the time I realized we were being shot at, I’d lost all sense of time, and a bitter cold had begun to crawl up my legs.

“This way! Hurry!”

Inspector Asukai’s shouts were drowned out by the bullets flying past my ears. He and Detective Ayatsuji shoved me forward and sprinted as quickly as they could. Everything was going by so fast that all I could see were blurry images: smoke, bullets, the spinning floor and walls. Parts of the ceiling and walls came crumbling down from the gunfire.

Although the distance threw off the enemy’s aim, the innate fear of being shot at in a hallway with nowhere to hide had completely shut down the rational side of my brain. I had no idea what to do. Multiple people were shooting at us with rifles, which echoed hollowly. I wanted to run, but my legs weren’t listening to me.

An ambush. Gunfire. I had to run. No—I had to fight back.

“What are you doing, you idiot?!”

Someone tightly grabbed my hand and began to pull me away. It was a low, sonorous voice. But before I could even process who it was, my body began to react on its own, and I shot off, sprinting forward as quickly as possible toward the door in the back. By the time we made it through the iron door, the hallway was almost completely engulfed in white smoke. Right after the door swiftly closed behind us, a bullet bounced off it, creating an ear-piercing ring.

We had escaped into a small room, perhaps some sort of supply closet. A window, maybe big enough for someone to barely fit through, welcomed dull light into the room and illuminated the dust floating in the air. There was nowhere else to go. It was a dead end. Therefore, I decided to reach for the sole window in the room to escape…when Detective Ayatsuji suddenly stopped me.

“Don’t,” he demanded, his voice a little gentler than usual. “The place is surrounded.”

He was right. I could hear faint footsteps coming from outside, and it wasn’t just one or two people. Heavy, hard boots were getting closer, crunching through the gravel, which meant that all the exits were most likely being heavily guarded.

“What…in the world…?” I managed to say after finally catching my breath.

“That’s no gang or mafia,” Asukai noted, keeping his voice down. “I can tell by the sound of their rifles. But then who are they—?”

Suddenly, Asukai grunted in pain. He was holding his side and gritting his teeth.

“Inspector Asukai, your side…,” I started.

“It’s not as bad as it looks. The bullet went straight through. Just nicked a rib.”

He claimed it wasn’t bad, but the sweat dripping down his forehead told a different story. Dark-red blood was gushing out of the wound by the rib where he was applying pressure, dyeing his suit crimson.

“More importantly, we’d better get out of here. If they toss a grenade into this tiny room, we’re done for.”

“Hmph. Really couldn’t have chosen a more boring way to try and pen me in. An ambush with guns? How mediocre. We ought to just brush them off.”

Detective Ayatsuji was still staring into space, even during a time like this. It was as if he could see his archnemesis, Kyougoku, standing in the distance and watching him. After the detective closed his eyes and pondered for a few moments, he opened them once more and shifted his gaze toward me.

“I have an idea.”

I crouched ready with my handgun by the door. The grip was slippery with sweat. In fact, I was sweating so much that it was only a matter of time before I risked having some randomly get in my eyes. Even though I was constantly wiping my forehead with my sleeve, it still wasn’t enough.

The gunfire had temporarily ceased, but a second wave of far more thorough and relentless attacks was bound to follow soon. That was why we had to get out of this room and escape before that happened, and the only one who could make that happen was me.

I’m fine, I thought. I’d finished at the top of my class at the academy in practical training, and I knocked out far more than a few instructors when they came at me with practice batons. However, there hadn’t been any live rounds during training. I’d known about my opponents’ weapons and abilities, and most importantly, the instructors hadn’t actually been trying to kill me. It hadn’t mattered who was still standing in the end because we both joked with one another immediately afterward.

But whoever falls here will never get up again. Will I really be able to do it?

The enemy was most likely using jammers outside, so I wasn’t getting any signal. But if I made it far enough out of range, I could call the Division headquarters. We didn’t need to kill every last bad guy.

“There are probably far fewer enemies out there than we think.”

That was what Detective Ayatsuji said earlier as he drew a simple map on the dust-covered floor while we discussed strategy.

“I know this because they used a smoke grenade to lure us here. There are only two entryways in this room: the door we came through and that small window.”

The detective drew the access points onto the map.

“How do hunters catch their prey when they lack people and firepower? It’s simple. They surprise them into a pitfall trap. After that, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”

He drew arrows onto the map. Once the enemy used smoke and gunfire to block off the larger exit—the door we’d come in through—they’d just have to toss tear gas or a grenade through the window, and we’d be done for. It made sense; that would keep the hunters’ damage and expenditures to a minimum.

In other words, the enemy didn’t have enough personnel to fully crush us.

“So…the side with the smoke isn’t as heavily guarded?” Asukai asked, crouched down with his arms around his knees.

“Precisely. The barrier on the other side of this door is more of a mental one than a physical one. The smoke makes it difficult to see anything, and that’s exactly why there are only two men positioned here. I confirmed they were armed while we were running.”

It’d taken everything me and Asukai had to get out of there, and yet the detective had the presence of mind to count the number of rifles…

“Just who are we up against?” Asukai asked Detective Ayatsuji.

“Beats me. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s clear who’s controlling them.”

This was the first wave of Kyougoku’s attack.

“You mean they’re being manipulated by Kyougoku’s skill?”

“Not quite. His skill, Possession Drop, lets a spirit down onto its target, altering their mind. However, only the target can see this spirit, and for the most part, it indirectly instills anger and confusion in them. He can’t engineer organized combat ops like this. To him, his skill is merely supplementary. What makes him truly evil is his own demonic intellect.”

His comment reminded me of a file I read at the Division. Kyougoku’s skill apparently ranked far below Detective Ayatsuji’s. It was neither a physical attack nor did it allow him to have complete control over his target. The spirits and creatures that possessed the targets would only make them hallucinate by showing them an illusion. That was all it did. But then…how did he manage to organize this attack?

I thought back to what the detective had told us while tightening my hand around the grip of my gun outside its holster.

“Asukai will fire a warning shot out the window when he sees a chance. That’ll be our signal to go,” Detective Ayatsuji instructed, leaning against the wall. “The worst that’ll happen is we’ll all die, but I’m hoping you manage to pull this off, Tsujimura.”

“…All right.”

“No need to ask the enemy who was behind this. If you sense danger, kill them at once.”

“All right…”

Kill… I got that. There was no other choice. Any other option had gone out the window the moment they started shooting at us. I was in no position to hesitate. But I’d never killed anyone in actual combat before.

“Tsujimura, what was the one line from that film you like so much?”

I was briefly taken aback by the sudden question, but the words almost immediately came to mind.

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

“Detective Ayatsuji,” I grumbled, glaring at him. “You’re a real jerk. You know that?”

But I was finally able to relax thanks to him. The protagonist in that movie wouldn’t be afraid during times like this, so I wasn’t going to be afraid, either.

“Heading out.”

After Inspector Asukai and I exchanged glances, I reached for the door, flipped the safety off my gun, and the moment I heard the bullet go out the window, I sprinted out the room.

The corridor was nothing but white smoke. I couldn’t even see a few feet in front of me, but that would actually work in my favor. I started sprinting; I didn’t even make a sound, since I’d taken my shoes off earlier. Detective Ayatsuji was right. The enemy couldn’t see through all this smoke, either, so if I approached quietly while barefoot, I’d have the element of surprise. Lowering my stance as I ran, I kept my pistol pointing forward to make sure I could fire at any time. I had to end things before the smoke cleared.

Before long, I could see the tips of someone’s black boots where the smoke wasn’t as thick. We were essentially as close as you could get, which gave neither of us any time to prepare. I noticed the startled enemy lift up his rifle out of the corner of my eye, so I slid between his legs, turned around, and swept him. He was still trying to aim the gun at me as he fell, so I kicked the gun into the air, then swung my leg back down, stepping on his wrist.

I pointed my gun at him, which was the first time I actually got a good look at the man. He was wearing bulletproof body armor and a gas mask with a small camera over his right eye, and his gun was equipped with a red-dot sight. A bad feeling began to swell in the pit of my stomach.

I held the gun to his head and shouted, “State your affiliation and mission objective!”

But he didn’t respond, so I fired a warning shot into the floor and shouted once more:

“Affiliation and mission objective!”

“City police…counterterrorist task force…,” came a muffled voice behind the gas mask. “We got a tip that a murderer killed a detective and took his place… He was barricaded in here with hostages… We were storming in.”

What on earth? We weren’t fighting bad guys. We were fighting the police’s special task force. I felt like I could hear Kyougoku’s high-pitched cackling even now.

“Shit!” I shouted with my gun still in position. “Nobody is impersonating a detective. We’re with the government! You were given false information—”

But I wasn’t even able to finish my sentence, because the other member of the task force tried to knock me out from the side. A gunstock brushed against the tip of my nose while I twisted out of the way. As my palms touched the ground, I flipped myself back onto my feet. Immediately, the enemy threw a punch. These highly trained, fully equipped soldiers could break bone with a single blow. Therefore, I leaned as far as I could to my right, dodging the strike before grabbing his extended elbow and dragging him toward me. I planned to go for his throat, since it was the only weak point in his armor. I did just that, throwing an elbow into his unprotected neck and causing him to moan in agony. I then pistol-whipped his temple with the butt of my gun.

All of a sudden, I lost my balance…because the man I had knocked down earlier had grabbed my ankle. Perhaps he was simply trying to stop us from fighting, but his timing couldn’t have been worse. Right as I began to fall back, I saw a muzzle in front of my face. The man I had hit on the temple was now pointing his rifle at me, so I held out my pistol to fire as well. The only way I was going to stop him was if I shot him in his bulletproof vest, but I was in no position to choose where I wanted to shoot. I felt like I was watching a movie frame by frame; time had almost come to a halt.

But I continued to fall, and my vision spun. The enemy’s gun was pointing right at me, and I instinctively put my finger on the trigger and aimed my pistol at his face. By the time my back hit the floor, our muzzles were facing each other.

However, out of nowhere, a black monster seeped out from under my feet.

It was like a shadow come to life; it had horns on its head and a black scythe in hand, which it swung into the man’s chest. Fresh blood squirted out from his sternum until he eventually collapsed. The dark, horned creature then let out an ear-piercing screech before slipping back inside my shadow and melting into nothingness.

I couldn’t believe what was happening.

Why did my skill have to show up now of all times?