Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 1.5

 A Christmas vow

The first place Natsunagi took us was a hotel dessert buffet.

The time limit was ninety minutes. Natsunagi quickly loaded up plates with the sweets she was after and lined them up on the table. After doing the typical high school girl thing and taking a photo, she dug in happily.

“I’m impressed you can eat all that sweet stuff after yesterday.” I sat across the table from her, eating coffee jelly with a spoon.

“Huh? Don’t you like sweets, Kimizuka?”

“I don’t mind them, but I’m not crazy about them. I did eat a lot of them since Siesta did, though.”

“Oh, that’s why. No wonder.” Natsunagi nodded, her hand temporarily falling still. “In the stories you tell me, you’re usually eating sweets with Siesta, so I just assumed you liked them.”

“Don’t make it sound like I’m constantly talking about Siesta,” I retorted.

Natsunagi simply said, “Mm-hmm, I see.” Pursing her lips, she took out a notebook. “‘Kimizuka doesn’t like sweets that much. That isn’t necessarily true of Siesta, though.’”

“You don’t need that last bit. Put down that I like soy sauce crackers better than cake.”

Natsunagi kept asking me about foods I liked and didn’t like, noting down what I told her. Was this supposed to help us understand each other as detective and assistant?

“Actually, don’t you have any questions for me, Kimizuka?”

“Let’s see… Where do you get that shampoo you always use?”

“I think your knack for getting dragged into trouble isn’t the reason you can’t make friends, Kimizuka.”

Our fun little conversation continued as Natsunagi and I enjoyed the cake buffet, then left for a nearby bowling alley.

After we checked in, we switched to bowling shoes. I grabbed a six-kilogram ball. “Do you usually come to places like this, Natsunagi?”

Natsunagi was polishing up a four-kilogram ball. “I’m concentrating. Don’t talk to me.”

“Not fair…”

Taking up her position in the lane, Natsunagi pressed her lips together and rolled her ball at the pins that stood twenty meters away.

The ball thudded against the ground, rolled fast, and knocked down the pins. And then…

“Six, hm? Up against you, though, Kimizuka… Well.”

“You’re not even aware that was an insult, are you?”

Apparently, she was seriously planning to beat me. After one gloves-off match…

“No way…”

Natsunagi looked up at the scoreboard, dazed.

Her score was ninety on the nose, while mine was pretty close to a hundred and fifty.

“Kimizuka, I thought you were bad at this!”

“You’re just really biased. Nobody ever said I was bad at athletic stuff.”

People kept comparing me with Siesta, and she wasn’t normal.

“So you’re actually pretty clever, you’re relatively toned, your face is a little blah, but your features are clean-cut, and you’re unexpectedly reliable… Huh?”

“Come on, the second game’s starting.”

After that, our “team-building” day continued. When we were done bowling, we played some games at the arcade that was in the same building, went shopping, and had dinner at an Italian restaurant. Somewhere in there, eight o’clock came and went.

Deciding it was about time we called it a day, we were walking to the station when we saw a street of trees decorated with pure-white lights.

“How pretty.” Natsunagi smiled at the Christmas scenery, her breath misting in the cold air. Standing beside her, I enjoyed the sight for a little while, too. “Hm? Did you forget to say You’re prettier?”

“Were you waiting for me to say it?”

I didn’t want people developing shoujo-manga-hero expectations for me.

“I don’t think complimenting girls ever does any harm, you know?”

“Well, good point. I’ll remember that.” Maybe that was part of building mutual understanding, too. I made a mental note. “And? Did you do what you came to do, Natsunagi?”

Had we reduced the chances the detective and her assistant wouldn’t quite connect? In the end, I didn’t think spending the day together had changed our communication all that much.

“Mm… I knew less about you than I thought I did.” Still facing forward, Natsunagi smiled wryly. “I don’t know much about the foods you like or what you’re actually good at. I bet she knew all about them, though.”

It was clear which “she” Natsunagi meant.

“I don’t think that information was really important to her.”

“Really? If she were here now, I bet she would have been one-upping me constantly. I know everything about my assistant.”

“That was a weirdly good imitation.”

Natsunagi cracked up a little, but only a little. “You and Siesta spent a lot of time together. You have experience. You have a bond. I know I shouldn’t make comparisons, and I’m not trying to run myself down, but I really do think my relationship with you is no match for hers. But listen…” Natsunagi turned to face me. “I’m not going to stop. I won’t stop learning things. I’ll learn more about you and teach you more about me, and our working relationship will get even better. …There’s no deeper meaning behind that, okay? I just want us to be partners who can trust and understand each other better.”

The cold wind blew, toying with Natsunagi’s earrings. I’d bought them for her when we were shopping earlier that day.

“So you want to know more about me?”

“Yes. I mean, Kimizuka, you’re really weird.” Looking at me, Natsunagi giggled.

That wasn’t the reaction I’d been expecting.

“There’s nobody else out there as weird and funny as you, so I’m not letting you get away.”

Natsunagi turned her head away slightly as she said it, but her hand hesitantly caught a little of my sleeve between her fingertips.

A thought occurred to me then. Was that why I’d accepted Siesta’s invitation and headed off to see the world with her? The ace detective had been incredibly weird, incredibly funny, and indescribably magnetic, and all of it had drawn me in… Somewhere along the way, she’d made me want to know more about her, and I’d let her call me into the unknown.

But in the end, I hadn’t tried to learn about her. I’d chosen to assume she had her reasons for not telling me anything, and I hadn’t pushed for anything more than the information she gave me. I knew nothing about who Siesta was, what she was actually fighting, or what sort of future she’d imagined. I hadn’t even tried to find out. I’d had no idea I’d end up with the regrets I’d had at the end of our journey.

Not that everything would have gone well if I’d known, of course. Still, over the past six months, I’d learned I couldn’t afford to be oblivious to the fact that I knew nothing. And so…

“I’d also like to know more about the detective. About you, Natsunagi.”

Natsunagi looked up. Her mouth fell open slightly, but as my words sank in, she smiled again. “You can stay Siesta’s assistant, Kimizuka. From now on, though, would you be my assistant, too?”

The hand that had been holding my sleeve reached out to me again.

“Yeah. Please make me your assistant.”

My right hand was still free, and I took Natsunagi’s hand.

““………””

For a little while, neither of us spoke.

It was a winter night, and Natsunagi’s hand was cold…but still warmer than I’d expected. I also got the feeling it was a little sweaty, but that sweat could technically be mine, so I didn’t bring it up.

“Natsunagi, why are you swinging my hand?”

“…No real reason.”

I got the feeling our handshake was turning into something else, but when I saw Natsunagi’s face, I couldn’t bring myself to pull my hand free. …Although, I’m not saying what her expression was.

“Listen, Kimizuka.”

“Hm?”

Natsunagi opened her mouth, then shut it, then tried a couple more times.

“You see, there’s something I would like to tell you.”

I wanted to joke about how awkward she was being all of a sudden, but looking at her made it impossible to tease.

“It’s less that I want to say it and more that I’ve gotten the urge to say it.”

As if she’d made up her mind, Natsunagi drew a deep breath, then gazed at my face.

I had a sense that she was about to say something decisive to me, but—

“Maybe this isn’t the time.” Natsunagi gently released my hand. “The scales aren’t balanced yet.” Her smile was slightly troubled, but her expression wasn’t completely pessimistic. Now just wasn’t the time. Even if she hadn’t mentioned anything specific, she’d probably said the very best of what she could say now.

That being the case, I only said, “I see.” For a moment, I wondered what one of the heroes in Natsunagi’s beloved shoujo manga would have said at a time like this. Either way, I was sincerely glad I wasn’t the protagonist of this story. All the readers would have slammed me for being a fool who couldn’t give her a real answer.

“We’ll continue this conversation later.”

“When, specifically?”

“That depends on how hard you work, doesn’t it, Kimizuka? The same goes for me, of course.”

…Oh yeah, probably. That someday was the day our wish came true.

Everything would wait until the sleeping beauty woke from her long nap.

Gazing at those silvery-white Christmas lights, I visualized that future.

“Yes, it’s fine. Once we’re grown-up, I’m sure somebody will be more honest about his feelings.”

“Natsunagi, I didn’t really catch that. Did you just foreshadow something?”