Monogatari Series - Volume 25 - Chapter 11.03

003 

It was apparently called the Antique Apartment. 

The place where Houko-chan lived, that is. It was a three-story building with six 4-tatami single-room apartments. It looked to have been built around the same time as the Tamikura Apartments where Senjougahara lived, but the most shocking thing of all was the fact that the thirteen-year-old girl lived there with her fifteen-year-old older brother. 

Rizumu-chan is also a little sister character, so I did begin to think that we had too many little sisters running around, but that didn’t mean that it was okay to kidnap one of them. Anyway, one day Houko-chan went out and then never returned home to the Antique Apartment. 

Given that the two siblings had clearly run away from home, just having his little sister be late coming home would be reason enough to worry, but again, because they are runaways, he would not have been able to go to the police for help looking for her. 

Well, I supposed that I didn’t have any way of knowing how effective the police were in Rizumu-chan’s worldview... But in any case, all of the residents of the apartments went out to search the neighborhood for her, and after waiting until the following morning, something finally happened. An attaché case arrived in the mail. 

An empty attaché case. 

It wasn’t completely empty, but the only thing inside was a single envelope with a letter demanding a ransom payment. 

“I don’t remember the details, but the letter demanded a payment of 50 million yen!” 

Rizumu-chan’s testimony was far from reliable, but the point was that he received a ransom letter. 

A price of 50 million yen in exchange for a human life—was that a fair price to set? Was it too high or too low? I was sure you could argue the value of life either way, but regardless of the greater issue of value, in practical terms, the sum demanded was not a small amount. I once had a middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt come up and give me a bill for 5 million yen, but that wasn’t important for this situation. The point was that it wasn’t the kind of money that a runaway boy could possibly pay. 

“That’s right! You’ve latched onto a good point, oniisan. I think that money was never the objective of this abduction!” 

“Money wasn’t the objective...? But the ransom letter demanded payment, didn’t it?” 

“Yes but it wasn’t the money that they wanted, it was to make him have to pay the money... They wanted to make him give in to an unreasonable demand by paying the money. That was their true goal!” Hmm. 

Her cheerful tone made it harder to accept what she was saying, but I could see what she was trying to say. But... Just who is this older brother character to be targeted for such an absurd plot? 

As a fellow older brother, I was curious. 

“He’s a hell-fanatic reaper.” 

“Huh...” 

And that was all it took to kill my curiosity. I didn’t want to be involved anymore. 

“But technically speaking, the target of the note wasn’t the reapers. His father is a reaper and an assassin, and he was the target of some inhuman threats—the Emperor of Crystal. Crystal Kaiser, undefeated 

for life, Rikka Gajumaru. Do you know of him, oniisan?” I didn’t know him. 

I didn’t want to know him. 

I would have asked her to take back the information she’d already given me, but of course that was impossible. 

In order to make Rizumu-chan leave this town, which was the ultimate goal, there would have to be a sacrifice. Learning more about this ridiculous family was the first compromise on the path to getting her to leave. 

A family with an emperor father, a reaper son, and an assassin daughter sounded completely nonsensical. 

Was the mother a ninja? 

“So the point of the abduction was to make the undefeated father give in to the threat? These people come up with some horrible ideas.” 

“Well, if you want to talk about horrible, the father is probably the more horrible person here. Apparently it’s a hobby of his to go around 

to these families and impregnate their daughters.” That’s beyond horrible. 

And if that was the case, then it was entirely possible that the siblings weren’t full-blood relatives—I didn’t want to get involved in the affairs of some other family, but it seemed like this family was just too spectacular to avoid getting involved. Could it even really be called a family? 

“So this is also revenge! More specifically, it’s revenge from a branch of the Tokinomiya Hospital for him laying his hands on their daughter!” 

“Oh, I know the Tokinomiya Hospital.” I’d just learned about them recently. 

Yep, I’ve heard all about them. 

I heard all about them, but I only understood a fragment of it. Essentially, they were a family of hypnotists or something. Which made sense. It would be a piece of cake to kidnap a thirteen-year-old girl if you had hypnotism powers, even if she was an assassin. 

Which meant that Rizumu-chan’s hypothesis that the kidnapping wasn’t about money, even though the ransom demanded a payment, seemed to have been confirmed. The Tokinomiya Hospital didn’t seem like a group that needed to kidnap children to earn money. 

To have a “Cursing Name” group, who were more abhorred by their own allies than by their enemies, out for revenge against him really highlighted just how unique a person this Emperor of Crystal must be. If the Tokinomiya Hospital was after him, then there was no way he stood a chance—rest in peace. 

“That’s not the case. The father wouldn’t pay the ransom. He just ignored the ransom.” 

“Oh...” 

So he was not only horrible, he was also trash. 

For this father, apparently two of his children being in trouble was nothing to cry over. 

“Mhm, because he was undefeated for life. He wouldn’t give in to a cowardly ransom.” 

“That sounds cool, but in reality...” 

Being undefeated for life was cool, but if you were also horrible trash, then it didn’t have much meaning. 

“Also, it’s worth mentioning that the reaper brother and assassin sister ran away from home to run away from their father, so in a situation like that, it’s not likely that the father would be relied on anyway. The sins of the father shall be visited upon the children. I guess 

you could say it’s their loss for being kidnapped!” What a cruel worldview. 

It made me think that my own world must’ve been comfortably lukewarm by comparison. 

“Okay, so the little sister was abducted, the older brother had no means to pay the ransom, and he wouldn’t go to his father for help. That sounds like there’s no solution to this problem. But from what you’ve told me, Houko-chan was safely freed from her captors—if you hadn’t told me that already, I wouldn’t have been able to tolerate listening to the rest of the story—so how did her older brother manage to scrape together 50 million yen?” 

“Oh, that part’s no big deal. Among the residents of the Antique Apartment are a wealthy young woman and a kind young man.  They can prepare 50 million or 500 billion yen without any trouble!” That sounded pretty comfortable too. 

50 million yen was nothing to them? 

“Mhm. For the blue-haired oneesan, a 10000-yen note is the lowest-value currency that she handles.” 

“Is there anybody normal in that worldview of yours?” 

I was starting to look forward to hanging out with a group of three female college students. 

In any case, I had to admit that in my own worldview, all of the residents of an apartment building wouldn’t go out looking for a lost thirteen-year-old girl, pay out a massive sum of money to pay her ransom, or have any degree of cooperative relationship among themselves. 

I wasn’t jealous of it, but I certainly wouldn’t mock it. 

“So, instead of relying on his undefeated-for-life father, the older brother was able to get the money from someone else, he paid the ransom to the Tokinomiya Hospital, then the assassin Houko-chan was safely returned to the Antique Apartment, and everyone lived happily ever after?” 

“As far as summaries go, you’re completely right, but it doesn’t make any sense. The 50 million yen was placed into the attaché case as the ransom letter said, and then the brother and the apartment residents dropped it off.” 

“Mhm, mhm.” 

“And the place that was designated for the drop-off is here, the North Shirahebi Shrine.” 

“What kind of deal are you guys doing in someone else’s town, huh?!” 

With that detail added, it now made sense why Rizumu-chan was here at the shrine. She was searching the scene of the crime for evidence. Was there anything more defining of a great detective than searching every inch of a crime scene for the critical piece of evidence? 

I hadn’t looked at it that way before, but now that she mentioned it, it kinda made sense for illegal transactions to take place at North Shirahebi Shrine nowadays. 

No matter how they tried to rebuild or revitalize the shrine, people rarely visited, and the air pocket hadn’t changed. 

“The abductors told them to leave the attaché case on top of the offering box. If they did so, Houko-chan would be released.” 

“That’s quite the offering.” 

“And the reaper older brother did exactly as he was told.” 

“He must have a real soft spot for his sister. If it were me, I would have taken a more severe approach to the trade. Even if it meant harm to the sister, I would have wanted to have some justice for what they had done, and I think the sister would want that too.” 

I babbled responses without much thought while I glanced over at the offering box. 

Just the other day, my two younger sisters (and my junior) were stuffed into that box like sardines into a can, so I had to admit that the whole scenario felt rather real to me... 

“Of course a reaper wouldn’t just take this lying down. In fact, he handled it all quite easily—due to being a reaper. He put the case where they directed, and then he and the others who came to help him hid 

around the shrine to wait for the abductors to show up.” 

“Don’t bring a swarm of your buddies to our town!” 

And she wanted to complain about me ruining the “specialness” of her coming here? 

The barriers between worlds aren’t meant to be crossed en masse, I mentally retorted. 

Anyway, the degree of teamwork demonstrated by the apartment residents was admirable, but more importantly, when it comes to an abduction case, the most difficult aspect for the perpetrator is that they must, at some point, come into contact with the victim’s side in order to collect their payment... Which meant that designating North Shirahebi Shrine as the drop location was bad enough, but to instruct them to leave the money on top of the offering box was incomprehensible. 

They chose a location that was almost entirely deserted, but then chose the most frequented and conspicuous location in the shrine to be the drop point. Maybe it was silly to expect common sense and consistency from one of the “Cursing Name” groups, but the situation simply didn’t make sense. 

It was like begging for someone to stick around and catch them when they came to collect. 

“I don’t know about wanting to be caught, but I do think they wanted them to stick around and watch. To see the performance.” 

“Performance?” “The magic trick.” 

Magic tricks? Illusions? 

Rizumu-chan continued. 

“To skip to the end, the perpetrators never showed up for the appointed time. They didn’t show up and release Houko-chan, and of course they also didn’t take the money.” 

“Hm... That doesn’t really fit with what you told me, does it?” 

“You’ll see. After getting impatient, a cool resident of the apartments with a rich friend ran over to the case and opened it up.” 

Despite being described as cool, he definitely sounded more hotblooded than anything. 

However, I didn’t think that a person would go move the attaché case just because they got impatient, so maybe they intuitively sensed that something wasn’t right—that maybe someone had somehow gotten past all of their watching eyes and taken the money from the case without being detected. 

It turned out that the intuitive sense was correct—well, half correct. 

The other half was completely unexpected and worthy of being called a magic trick. 

Upon opening the attaché case, the 50 million yen that should have filled it was gone—and in its place was a thirteen-year-old girl in a peaceful sleep. 

Stuffed in like a sardine. 

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3  This is referring to Kunagisa Tomo and Ii, the main protagonists of Zaregoto. Tomo is the heiress of the Kunagisa family, an extremely rich and powerful political organization.