Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.1

 A story that exists for you

The next day, as usual, I went to school in the morning. Since attendance wasn’t mandatory, the classroom was pretty empty. Natsunagi was in a different class, but she probably hadn’t shown up, either. I still hadn’t settled on my future course, and I kept staring at the book on my desk: a collection of past entrance-exam problems from the university I planned to apply to.

I’d narrowed things down to private liberal arts schools, so I only needed three subjects. English had never been a problem for me, and my short-term memory could get me through social studies. The biggest troublemaker was Japanese.

“You can’t field literary-analysis questions by memorizing stuff, right?”

I wanted to go find Natsunagi and ask her to explain it to me.

The lunch bell rang, and I grabbed my sweet roll and coffee and headed for the roof. This had been routine for me lately, but then what Ice Doll had said last night surfaced in my mind. Maybe my days were this monotonous because I’d unknowingly chosen not to make a choice.

“…It’s cold.”

There was nobody on the roof. The January wind was frigid, and I briefly considered going back inside, but the sight of the endlessly clear blue sky convinced me to find a random spot and sit down. Reloaded had liked this sort of sky, too.

Munching on my convenience-store roll, I got out my smartphone. I’d sent Rill a ton of texts, asking if she was all right. The only thing the app showed was a long row of my sent messages. She hadn’t responded to a single one.

Still, I sent her another text today; I believed that not responding and not seeing them at all were different things. —Just then, my phone rang. The name on the display wasn’t one I’d been expecting.

“Charlie? This is rare. What’s up?” I took a swallow of coffee, getting my mouth and throat warmed up.

“…What do you mean, ‘what’? You sent me a long text the other day, remember?”

Come to think of it, Rill had been so thorough about not responding that I’d gone to Charlie for advice regarding the stuff that had been happening lately. Apparently, she was calling me back about it.

“Why me? We don’t ask each other for advice.”

“Well, yeah, that’s why I thought you might have a novel idea or two.”

“What about Yui? Try her.”

“We make small talk sometimes, but Saikawa’s busy being an idol. I can’t load her down with heavy conversations.”

“So what makes it okay to load me down, huh?” On the other end of the line, Charlie heaved a deliberate sigh. “And? What exactly are you worrying about?”

“I like the way you gripe but go along with the conversation anyway. You should lean into that.”

“I’m about to hang up on you.”

Charlie and I had always fought like cats and dogs, and the fact that we were able to have a conversation like this now was progress. Or I wanted to think it was anyway.

“Well, it’s like I wrote in that text: I’ve got lots of worries.”

“Okay, then which one is worrying you the most? The fact that Scarlet is the Ace Detective’s enemy and you can’t find him? Or are you concerned about the Magical Girl, who was chasing Gluttony and then dropped out of touch?”

I would have been hard-pressed to say which of those things worried me more.

In the end, though, that lack of focus was probably a bad habit I needed to fix. It was the same thing Noches had bluntly pointed out to me.

“I’m not your friend, so I’m going to be the one to say it.”

“I’ve been hearing that from a lot of people lately.” Maybe I had no actual friends.

“Maybe they’re both important. What’s wrong with that?” I wasn’t expecting that. “Nothing says everyone’s only allowed to have one worry. There’s no rule that you can only have just one precious thing, either. People’s top priorities and most precious things change from moment to moment; it’s a spectrum.”

Charlie’s perspective seemed to validate the situation I was in.

“For example, if a mother has two children, don’t you think it’s dumb to ask which one she loves more?”

“…Yeah. But does that spectrum of yours even apply to that situation?” If you had two kids you’d gone through labor for, was there ever a moment when your feelings for one were stronger than the other?

“Yes. At times like that, you worry about the child who’s farthest from you.”

Charlie spoke as if she were a mom who’d been through this herself. Not that she could’ve been.

“It’s like that for you, too, isn’t it, Kimizuka? Sometimes, Ma’am is the one you love most, and sometimes, you miss Nagisa more.”

“Whoops, can’t hear you, you’re breaking up.” I almost slammed my phone into the roof, but I managed to control myself at the last second.

“Did I say something weird?”

“…Never say it again,” I gritted out.

Charlie laughed out loud. “Okay, okay,” she told me. “Still, it can’t be bad to hesitate like that and think several things are precious.” Then she drew a new conclusion. “That said, the more things you love, the more important choices you’ll be faced with, and if you want to protect all those things, you have to be strong enough to do it. Basically, this is really about what we should do when we sense we’re reaching our own limits.”

Charlie had to have developed that mindset in the process of traveling all over the world as an agent. She encountered rains of bullets and passed through the fires of war on a regular basis, and with that came choices. What should she protect, and what should she discard? What would she have to do to protect everything?

It wasn’t that hesitating between two choices or picking up more precious things was bad in and of itself. It was just that if you wanted your wishes to come true, you weren’t allowed to hang on to the status quo. I was probably going to have to hunt for a solution to that.

“Sorry I can’t help you.”

“No, that was a good hint.” Just then, I heard the sound of a distant plane from the phone. Was she at an airport? “You’re going to another country again?”

“Yes. That’s how I live.”

She’d said as much at Saikawa’s birthday party, too. We all wanted to wake Siesta up, of course, and as long as we had that wish in common, our group would remain intact. But Charlie had her duties, and she had left to fight across the world as a globe-trotting agent. It was a journey taken to protect people.

“Come home.”

She caught her breath.

“Of course. Ma’am is waiting for me. The others, too,” she added. “Oh— Wait a second. Did you actually text because you were worried about me? Was wanting advice just an excuse?”

Impossible. No way would that ever happen.

“Well, Siesta told us to get along.”

“Oh, that’s right. We were supposed to have gotten closer, weren’t we?”

We both laughed a little. Then I said, “See you later,” and hung up.

I realized I’d gotten a social media notification. Yui Saikawa had started a live stream on a simple video-upload site.

“…Damn, it’s been going for fifteen minutes already.”

Shuddering at my mistake, I hastily clicked the link.

Yui Saikawa appeared on the screen, dressed casually. She seemed to be reading comments that fans were sending to her in real time and chatting. I was about to write a comment myself when I realized Saikawa was looking my way, a serious expression on her face.

“Among the people watching this live stream, I’m sure some of you have a lot to worry about.”

Apparently, I’d jumped in during some sort of serious advice session.

“But I suspect that’s proof that what’s causing your worries is truly precious to you.”

Naturally, Saikawa wasn’t actually looking at me, just the camera. But she was speaking to the crowd of fans beyond it.

“And that’s the reason you feel so unsure. I’d say that’s something you can be proud of. …As a matter of fact, I’ve lived through some of that myself.”

Saikawa gave a shy smile.

She was probably talking about what Natsunagi and I had watched her go through last year. Now Saikawa was standing in front of a mic, counseling fans who felt similarly conflicted.

“Come to think of it, she said that to me, too.”

She’d said she’d help me someday. She didn’t know whether she could be my right arm, but she’d at least be my left eye.

Had her sapphire eye really seen everything? That was just after my right hand had been taken.

“…………”

Something occurred to me then.

It was just a thought experiment. It had no substance, and it wasn’t even a concrete plan of action. It wasn’t a direct solution to any of the problems that were worrying me.

Realizations were how everything began, though. From there, we formed theories, gathered evidence, improved our deduction, and reached a conclusion. That was how we’d always done it. The detective and her assistant had worked that way before, and we still worked that way now.

“What do you think? Did that lighten your load a bit? You know, I’m always so impressed by people who have a lot to care about! And so—”

Smiling like a flower in bloom, Saikawa gazed at the camera. At us.

“—I’m going to keep on singing, just for you!”

That wasn’t directed at me; I was being overly self-conscious…right?

“Nah, that’s fine.”

Just now, she’d definitely looked at me. Exclusively at me. Or so I thought.

And if she could make me think that, Yui Saikawa was an idol in the truest sense of the word.

“Kimizuka!”

Just then, a voice called my name for sure.

Natsunagi had stepped through the door to the roof. She was out of breath, but she started talking as soon as she spotted me.

“The hospital just called. Siesta’s—!”