Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.2

 The particulars of a case with no client

After that, we climbed into the black car that came to the school to pick us up.

A Man in Black was at the wheel, and needless to say, our destination was the hospital where Siesta was.

After a little time in the back seat of the car, I turned to Natsunagi. “I figured you wouldn’t be at school. Attendance is optional, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but I did want to spend a little time in school.”

As someone who knew Natsunagi’s thoughts on school and how she’d come to think that way, I really knew how she felt.

“That uniform’s nice, too,” I said.

Natsunagi was in the winter version of the sailor uniform. It was mostly black with a blue ribbon, and it looked incredible on her.

“You’re saying that now? Why, exactly?”

“It’s still pretty novel to me, you know.”

“That’s because you don’t come to school much, Kimizuka. You’ve squandered your classic high school days,” Natsunagi informed me primly.

“Yeah, I never got anywhere close to an after-school date or anything.”

“Somehow, hearing the word ‘date’ come out of your mouth sends a chill down my spine.”

Not fair. I shot Natsunagi a look.

“Actually, why would you bring that up now of all times?” Natsunagi was smiling with chagrin.

…Sorry. But for me, this was exactly the time for this kind of conversation. I was shaken up, and I had to resort to small talk to calm myself down.

“So it’s true that Siesta’s EKG showed a change in activity?”

That was what Natsunagi had come to the roof to tell me.

“Yes, Noches called from the hospital. She didn’t give me any details, though.”

The seed in her heart couldn’t have sprouted, could it? Or was it a sign that the problem had been resolved, and Siesta could safely wake up? We didn’t even know whether that change in the EKG was good or bad.

…Still, after absolutely nothing over the past few months, something about Siesta’s body had changed. The status quo wasn’t allowed to last forever. As we got closer and closer to the hospital, I gazed through the window at the scenery.

“It’s fine,” Natsunagi whispered. “It’s going to be fine.”

She’d said it twice, without turning to look at me. A warm hand covered my right hand.

The moments we spent in the car before it reached the hospital were somehow brief and long at the same time.

Thirty minutes later, we arrived at our destination.

We took the elevator to the third floor, then went to Siesta’s room at the end of the hall. Noches was standing outside the door. As soon as she saw us, she nodded wordlessly and motioned for us to go in. Steeling ourselves, Natsunagi and I opened the door and saw…

“…Stephen.”

The Inventor was standing by Siesta’s bed, wearing a white lab coat and noting something down on a tablet. It had been about four months since I’d last seen him.

Natsunagi and I exchanged looks, then approached the bed. Siesta was sleeping peacefully. To my amateur eyes, nothing seemed to have changed. Meanwhile, Natsunagi immediately asked for an expert opinion. “How’s Siesta?”

“There are no problems. Right now, she’s in the same state as yesterday,” Stephen told her, still mostly focused on his tablet.

That probably meant the seed hadn’t sprouted, but she also showed no sign of waking up. First, relief drained the tension out of my shoulders, and then disappointment came in to replace it. So Siesta wasn’t going to wake up yet…

“But something definitely happened, didn’t it?”

“Yes. This morning, for a limited period of time, her heart showed abnormal activity. That much is certain.” Behind his glasses, Stephen’s eyes narrowed. “However, the seed shows no sign of growth. That means her heartbeat may have grown irregular because she wished it to.”

“Are you saying Siesta gave herself heart trouble on purpose? …Why?”

I mean, Siesta had once tricked an enemy by stopping her own heart and putting herself in a state of suspended animation. She could do that stuff. Why would she do it now, though?

“I believe thinking about that is a job for the detective and her assistant.”

…Good one, Stephen. However, everything had a cause and an effect. If we thought about those, we were bound to come up with some sort of theory.

“What made Siesta do that to her own heart?”

Especially after she’d been asleep all this time. Why?

“Why don’t we try thinking about it the other way around?” Natsunagi suggested. “Let’s look at the weirdness in Siesta’s heart as the cause. What’s happened as a result?”

“……? They spotted a temporary change, but that’s it. Nothing else happened. Stephen just told us…”

Even as I said it, I realized something felt off. Come to think of it, Siesta had always acted with intention. She’d never done anything pointless.

…In that case, if Siesta had deliberately caused some change in her heart, and we took a broad view of what happened as a result…

“—Stephen Bluefield came here,” I said. Natsunagi seemed to have developed the same theory; she nodded quietly.

That was the big picture. Siesta’s heart had started acting weird, meaning Stephen needed to come examine her, even though he hadn’t been here in a long time. That seemed perfectly natural to us, but it wasn’t at all.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I put several jobs on hold so that I could come here today. Technically, monitoring patients’ progress isn’t my job. The idea that Daydream may have intentionally caused an issue in her heart in order to summon me isn’t out of the question,” Stephen agreed.

That left us with another question, though: Why had Siesta wanted to summon Stephen?

“To put us in contact with him,” Natsunagi deduced.

“She did it for us? Why…?”

It was true that I’d been hoping to find Stephen, for several reasons. I had a ton of things to ask him about—the vampires, Reloaded, Siesta herself. I’d even sat by Siesta’s bedside and told her about them while she slept.

But that didn’t mean… Oh. No, I see.

“Because Siesta is a detective who makes wishes come true.”

Smiling, Natsunagi gazed at the sleeping beauty’s face.

Even during that odd period when I’d been involved with the Magical Girl and her enemies, the detective had been at the foundation of our story. Was Siesta fulfilling requests from me and Natsunagi even while she was unconscious?

“Although Daydream is asleep, it isn’t as if all her physiological functions have ceased,” Stephen began. “For example, her auditory system is still functional. When you spoke to her, it’s possible that she heard you and unconsciously responded.”

Good grief. The detective’s assistant had turned into her client.

…Still.

“I think you’re working too much, Siesta.”

She was right in the middle of one of those naps she loved. She should rest while she was asleep, at least. Gently, I brushed Siesta’s bangs aside with a fingertip.

“Hm? Hang on a second.” Struck by a thought, I stopped moving. “Does that mean she heard everything I said when I was in here talking to her?”

The times I’d been here alone, for example. I’d made plenty sure no one else was there, and then I’d said the sorts of things I could only say because Siesta was asleep. Had she heard those, too?

Sweat broke out on my forehead. The things I’d quietly let slip to Siesta circled around and around in my mind, and all of a sudden, I felt nauseous.

“Kimizuka, don’t tell me you were whispering sweet nothings to her.” Natsunagi gave me a chilly look.

“…Huh? Nnnno… Not at all.”

Her deduction was 100 percent wrong. Shaking my head, I cleared my throat a few times—like a dozen—then got the conversation back on topic. “Stephen, I’ve got some questions for you.”

If Siesta had really called the doctor here for me and Natsunagi, I had to make sure we got what we needed.

“Am I under any obligation to respond?” Stephen said brusquely. “My job is saving people, nothing more. I treat them, and I create tools to that end. I don’t have time to spare for anything else.”

Yeah, Stephen always had been that type of guy.

Now that he knew his patient Siesta was fine, his business here was done. Appeals to emotion wouldn’t work on him. Unless I had a logical reason, Stephen wouldn’t answer pointless questions.

“You’re never interested in anything except the patient in front of you.” Natsunagi moved to stand in front of Stephen. “But don’t you think you could make progress by seeing what happened to the people you saved, or what the tools you created have done?”

That was exactly what I’d been planning to ask about: a person Stephen had saved, and the tools he’d created. This conversation would absolutely have value to him.

“If you want to use medicine and science to save more people, you should pay a little more attention to those things,” Natsunagi told him bluntly. She didn’t flinch.

In response, Stephen turned and headed for the door, lab coat flaring out behind him.

“I have a job waiting. We’ll talk on the way.”