Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 2.9

 The promised parting

After losing Scarlet and Gluttony, the rest of us relocated to a nearby hotel. Even with her wounded arm, Rill had kept trying to go after the enemy, and we needed to calm her down.

I thought we really should have taken her back to Drachma’s clinic, but Rill had categorically refused. Besides…

“She won’t need treatment for a wound like that,” Drachma had said after I’d described her injuries to him over the phone.

It certainly didn’t look like a minor wound from here. However, Rill hadn’t wanted to go to the clinic, and we couldn’t force her, so we’d split the difference and made her rest in a room at the hotel. Natsunagi stopped the bleeding, performed first aid, and somehow managed to get Rill to lie quietly on the bed.

“Thanks, Natsunagi. That was a huge help,” I said, offering her a fresh cup of coffee when she emerged from the bedroom.

“I spent half my life in a hospital, so I know how to do that much.” With a wry smile, Natsunagi accepted the cup, took a sip…and wrinkled her nose. Come to think of it, she wasn’t a fan of black coffee, was she? I handed her a sugar packet. “We’re lucky this place has bandages and pain medication.”

“Yeah, it looks like it’s just a regular hotel.”

“Looks” might not have been the right word. It was just a regular hotel. If you showed qualifications proving you were a Tuner or the equivalent, though, this place treated you accordingly.

Of course, this wasn’t true of every hotel. However, on the special electronic map Natsunagi had been given after she became a Tuner, facilities where she could get help from the Men in Black were marked with red pins.

Thinking back, during those three years I’d spent traveling with Siesta, we’d sometimes borrowed civilian facilities like this for special purposes. Back then, I’d just assumed Siesta had an insane number of connections, but…

Actually, I suspected we wouldn’t have had to travel like paupers if she’d used the full extent of her Tuner authority. Once she woke up, I’d give her what for.

“Maybe I’ll stay in the bedroom.” Still carrying her coffee cup, Natsunagi started back toward the room where Rill was resting.

“Isn’t she asleep?”

“This is Rill we’re talking about. She may just fake like she’s asleep, then sneak out through the window.”

“You’ve got her personality down, all right,” I told her.

Natsunagi giggled, then went into the bedroom.

Then I was alone in the room…almost. Aside from the enemy, there had been four of us at that fight: me, Natsunagi, Rill, and…

“Can I ask who you actually are now, Ookami?”

The proxy assistant had been gazing out the window. The great sickle was leaning against the wall beside him. From what I’d seen of that battle, there was no way he was just a detective’s attendant.

“I’m pretty sure I told you I was with the Security Police.”

“Oh, I see. Guess they reserve the super-weird weapons for the elite officers,” I commented. It didn’t even count as sarcasm.

Lighting a cigarette, Ookami turned around. “My public job really is with the Security Police. Privately, I also take special missions directly from the Federation Government. However, there’s one other side to my life.” Ookami’s sharp eyes narrowed even further. “I’m an avenger.”

The word Ookami had said to Gluttony came back to me. Revenge.

“Did Gluttony kill one of your people?”

“Yeah, an old friend…or rather, an old colleague. He was a Tuner,” Ookami told me. “Have you heard of the Enforcer?”

“…His main job was secretly hunting down criminals who couldn’t officially be brought to justice, right?”

I remembered what Siesta had told me early last autumn, when we went to the Federal Council. The Enforcer hadn’t been at that meeting. He’d been killed in the line of duty.

“Douglas Amon, the Enforcer, had roots in Asia and South America. He became a valuable part of Japan’s Security Police while he was still young. —A year ago, Gluttony killed him. The Enforcer’s mission then was killing the Seven Deadly Sins, but they got him instead.”

Ookami’s voice was low.

“He died trying to protect a young child.”

The smoke from his cigarette rose toward the ceiling.

“So dealing with Gluttony and the rest of them wasn’t the Magical Girl’s mission back then?”

Was that why Reloaded had been so anxious that someone else would kill Gluttony before she could?

“But if that happened a year ago, why was the ‘enemy of the world’ designation removed?”

Killing the Enforcer should have been a pretty hefty crime…

“After Amon died, another Tuner killed three of the seven supernaturals instantly. When they saw that, the remaining four went into hiding, and the Federation Government decided they were harmless.”

“Who killed them?”

“Arsene, the Phantom Thief.”

A chill ran through me; that wasn’t a name I was expecting to hear.

“The Phantom Thief was in jail at the time, but he killed the supernaturals known as Lust, Sloth, and Wrath from his underground cell in an instant.”

“…How? Like some kind of magic trick?”

Honestly, it wouldn’t have been all that strange if he’d managed to pull off a stunt like that.

The Phantom Thief Arsene had been thrown in jail for the crime of stealing the sacred text. Even from his jail cell, he’d apparently manipulated humans around the world. Siesta and I had seen a sliver of the man’s abilities for ourselves.

“In addition, I hear he escaped execution because that achievement was recognized.”

“So the government pardoned him?”

I’d always wondered why he hadn’t been punished more harshly when he’d committed a crime as serious as stealing the sacred text. Who’d have thought that would come into play here?

“And so the problem was solved, at least on the surface. It wasn’t enough for me, though. Gluttony, the one who’d killed my colleague, was still alive somewhere. I waited patiently and honed my skills so that I’d be able to end that monster myself someday.”

…So Ookami’s motive was the same as Rill’s. He’d become an avenger.

“But you’re not a Tuner, right?”

“No, unfortunately. The Enforcer post was fused with the Assassin’s, since their duties were similar. I just inherited his sickle and became a plain old avenger. All so that I could kill Gluttony.”

Ookami studied the sickle. Was he working on orders from the Federation Government because he’d been looking for a chance to get close to Gluttony? He’d become Natsunagi’s attendant in the course of those duties, and he’d just so happened to encounter his sworn enemy today.

“What are the Seven Deadly Sins anyway?”

“We still don’t know much. They’re supernaturals who follow their desires and leave destruction in their wake, just as their names suggest. We don’t know where they came from. Some say that they’re humans who’ve had weapons transplanted into their bodies, and others say they’re human-demon chimeras.”

…There’s nothing as unsettling as an enemy you can’t identify.

“All we know for sure is that the supernaturals are monsters that embody human malice. Gluttony is far more brutal than the others. His byname is the demon Beelzebub.”

“That’s the Lord of the Flies, huh?”

There was a legend I’d heard somewhere. The name makes you think of an insect, but the Lord of the Flies is starved for power and devours everything. Even among the most notorious demons, he’s the hardest one to handle.

“Do you have any idea why Scarlet appeared beside Gluttony back there? It looked like he was trying to save him. Is there some sort of connection between him and the Vampire?”

“Not that I’ve ever heard. I’d rather not think that someone might be cooperating with the Seven Deadly Sins, but…” Ookami expelled a big puff of cigarette smoke. “Either way, what I need to do is simple. Even if they do have a collaborator, it won’t matter. There are four supernaturals left, and I swear I’ll end them with my own hands.”

“So you’re inheriting the will of the Enforcer?”

The man who’d laid down his life protecting an innocent child.

“There’s no point in putting it into words. However, I knew plenty about the way he lived before I took my place on the battlefield.” Ookami stubbed out his cigarette in his portable ashtray.

I’d finally gotten a glimpse of Ookami’s personality. It was still just a tiny fragment, of course. But for just a moment, I’d seen a trace of someone else in him.

The shadow of Danny Bryant, who’d often smoked that same brand of cigarettes.

“—Don’t just barrel ahead without talking to me,” a voice broke in.

I turned and saw Reloaded, her right arm bandaged. Natsunagi was behind her; she looked worried, or maybe resigned.

“Rill will give you the other three supernaturals. But Gluttony is her prey. You may be part of the former Enforcer’s inner circle, but Rill won’t let anyone get in her way.”

She must have been listening to us from the next room. She really wasn’t the type to stay in bed. She must drive doctors crazy.

“With those injuries?” I asked. Rill turned away from me. “Besides, you’re hiding something, aren’t you?”

Rill’s health had suddenly crashed on her today, and she’d collapsed on the sports field. Drachma had told me to ask her about the symptoms. That had to mean the situation was serious enough that she was determined to hide it.

“We’re partners. If something’s going on, I want you to tell me.”

Even if our relationship was “familiar and master,” nothing said a pet couldn’t worry about his owner.

“Yes, that’s right. Rill considered you her partner.” Rill smiled just a little, but that smile was lonely. “You didn’t take her hand, though.”

“That was…”

At the stadium that afternoon, I’d paused when Rill had held out her hand to me.

I was already holding Siesta’s and Natsunagi’s hands; both of mine were full. If I’d taken Rill’s hand, I knew I might end up causing her trouble. She hadn’t missed that brief hesitation.

“Besides, Rill initially formed a contract with you to defeat Pandemonium. The White Tengu died, right? It wasn’t the plan Rill had in mind, but now that Pandemonium’s lost its leader, it should subside soon.”

That meant my contract with her was over. I’d been dismissed.

“Rill, wait. I…”

“Don’t try to get involved out of sympathy when you can’t commit.”

Can’t commit. Those words made me remember what Noches had said.

“Something precious may slip through your fingers someday.”

“I don’t know everything about your past.”

Although I couldn’t find the right words, a girl spoke to Rill in my place.

“That means I won’t lecture you like I know what I’m talking about, and I have no right to stop you. However…” There were flames in Natsunagi’s red eyes, and passion in her words.

“…what is it you most want to accomplish? What have you been living for? What are your hopes for your future?”

Nagisa Natsunagi had asked Drachma something similar.

Faced with the enemy who’d stolen her time, her friends, and half of herself, she’d come up with one answer. That was why she was asking Reloaded this question, since the other girl was in a similar position now: How do you intend to live?

“Rill has…”

She gave her answer.

“I only have one wish. I want to kill Gluttony with my own two hands.”

As Natsunagi gazed at her sadly, Rill walked right past her.

I couldn’t find the words to stop her, either.