Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.2

 The new heroine’s name is…

“That’s weird. Why is it midnight already?”

When I checked my phone outside Siesta’s hospital room, it was the twenty-fifth.

True, I’d sat back down again, thinking I’d watch Siesta’s face just a little longer before heading home. I’d reminisced about the past and thought about the future…but how could that possibly have taken an hour?

I needed to head home already. It was past midnight, and I had plans in the morning. I had to take a shower and get to bed. With that thought, I hurried to the elevator. Except…

“It’s out of order?”

For some reason, the elevator wasn’t responding.

It had worked a couple of hours ago; it was weird for it to break out of nowhere. Or had they shut it down for the night? There was nothing I could do, so I headed for the stairs.

“Man. I hate that this always happens to me.”

Blaming this stroke of bad luck on my predisposition, I made my way down the poorly lit stairs.

The relative darkness wasn’t very reassuring, and that’s before you take into account that this was a hospital.

I picked up the pace. Five steps, ten steps, twenty, until I reached a landing where moonlight streamed in through the window. I looked up, then noticed something strange.

“Siesta’s room was on the third floor. Right?”

No, I was sure about that. I’d been there a lot over the past few months.

So what the hell?

I stared at the floor number on the wall of the landing.

“Why am I still on the third floor?”

I’d come down quite a ways, but here I was in front of a 3F sign on the landing. I felt my hair stand on end.

“…Oh, come on,” I said to nobody in particular. Then I ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I reached another landing, I looked at the number on the wall—3F. I ran down more stairs. The number on the next landing was—3F. I ran down another flight, and—4F.

“The fourth floor?!”

Was I losing my mind, or was the hospital a fancy trick building created by some up-and-coming designer? I ran downstairs—and sometimes up—in search of the truth, but I found no answers.

It was the dead of winter, but my forehead wouldn’t stop sweating. Where was I, and what was I running toward? Just then, I sensed something behind me.

I don’t want to turn around, I thought, but my body did it anyway. All I saw was darkness. And—a hand dyed with red reached out of that darkness.

“When did I wander into a horror story?!”

If detectives were mystery experts, who did you call for horror? Who would take down this monster? A medium? A Shinto priest? An exorcist? I just needed to get away from that hand, so I took off up the stairs. This time, I was definitely heading up.

At last, I reached the top and saw a metal door, which I promptly kicked open. The outside air brushed my cheeks. Finally, I was away from all the weirdness—

“—Huh?”

The next moment, the only thing in front of me was the night sky.

The city lights formed a beautiful scene under my feet.

And I was in the process of slowly jumping into it.

A floating sensation swept over me.

What the hell was happening? All I knew was that I was falling.

“Grab on!”

I didn’t know whose voice that was, but I knew they were talking to me.

At the same time, I saw a bright, flashing, aqua-colored light in the darkness.

My hand instinctively reached toward it and grabbed onto some stick-shaped thing. All my weight came to bear on it, and I dropped like a rock. But the shining staff held firm and slowly pulled me up until finally, I collapsed onto a hard surface.

“…Hff. Hff.”

I was breathing hard and sweating buckets. Feeling faintly dizzy, I looked around.

Was this the roof of the hospital? What was I doing up here?

“Was I about to jump?”

The answer I’d reached sent a shiver through me. Naturally, I hadn’t tried to dive off the roof on purpose. That bizarre phenomenon had pushed me into it.

“Have you caught your breath yet?”

I heard a girl’s voice.

It was the same person who’d held out that shining staff and told me to grab it.

As I looked around curiously, I heard her speak again, above me. “Up here.”

She was sitting on top of the water tower.

That pale-blue light glowed in the darkness, shining from parts of her clothes and the staff she was holding. That was what had saved me.

“…Oh. Haven’t seen you since…the Federal Council in New York?”

Moonlight illuminated the girl’s face.

“What are you doing here, Reloaded?”