Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

Ten days later…

I set out pretty early in the morning for the hospital where Siesta slept, as usual.

Nothing about her condition or her heart had changed. I didn’t know whether I should be relieved about that or regret the lack of change. However, she seemed to be sleeping so comfortably that looking at her face made me smile, just like always.

…Although, Noches seemed to find it weird. She wasn’t the only one who was hard on me, either.

“Kimizuka? All this is wrong.”

Natsunagi looked from me to my practice problems and back, despair clear in her face. She was holding a red pen. “You completely wiped out on the literary-analysis questions. What is this? Do you just not have a human heart or something?”

“I’m not psychic. I don’t know these characters. How am I supposed to know what they’re feeling?” In the hospital’s small waiting room, I tossed my mechanical pencil aside.

“Haaah. Maybe we’ll have to do some dialoguing again.” Natsunagi spun her pen in her fingers, a little exasperated.

When she said “dialoguing,” I assumed she meant what we’d done last Christmas. She was probably saying I needed to practice communicating, since I was so bad at reading emotions.

“I know what you’re feeling now, though, Natsunagi.”

“Oh yes? Take a guess, then.”

“You want me to compliment your manicure.”

The pen Natsunagi had been spinning stopped dead. Cautiously, she withdrew her hand. “…How come you answer all other questions correctly?”

That would be because I’d spent a lot longer around Natsunagi than I had around some characters I’d only just read about for the first time.

“Actually, why do we have to study even when we’re at the hospital?”

“What, you think this has nothing to do with you? There aren’t many days left until the exams, you know.” Natsunagi glared at me. “Do you understand that?”

The college entrance exams were only about two weeks away at this point. I’d been dragged into one global crisis after another lately, and I hadn’t had time to study. …That was part of it. Ten days ago, though, we’d finally destroyed Gluttony and the other three remaining supernaturals, taking that threat off the table.

“Still, I never thought you’d aim for the university I got into, Kimizuka.” Natsunagi giggled.

I was applying to several departments, but one of them was the Department of Literature, the same as Natsunagi.

“Did you not want me around or something?” I asked.

“…Read between the lines.”

I’d mostly known the answer to that one. “Well, if I flunk out, work your Tuner magic and save me.”

“Yikes, you straight up said that you’re planning to cheat…”

“I’m kidding, okay? Just joking.”

Natsunagi could have done the exact same thing if she’d felt like it, but she’d never cheat. The previous Ace Detective wouldn’t have done it, either. Siesta hadn’t used her Tuner qualifications to make easy money, for example. We’d paid for all our food and shelter ourselves back then. Maybe Siesta had enjoyed living like that…

“It shouldn’t be long now.” Natsunagi glanced at her watch and started putting our textbooks away. I had plans to meet someone else here today.

“Aren’t you going to see her, too?”

“I think it’s better if I’m not there, don’t you?”

No, I didn’t. But I trusted Natsunagi’s instincts a lot more than my own with regard to these kinds of subtleties, so I decided to let her make that call.

“Okay. See you later, then.” She waved and left.

The person I was waiting for showed up just a minute later.

“Oh, there you are.”

At the sound of her voice, I turned, and she started toward me.

“Hmm. This is pretty tricky.” She was having some trouble navigating a small level difference in the floor. “We’re in a hospital. Why are there steps here? Stephen had better brace for a complaint.”

“It’s a relief to see you as prickly as ever,” I told her.

Reloaded smiled up at me from her wheelchair. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess. Ten days.”

It felt longer than that since I’d last seen her. We gazed at each other for a while, but we couldn’t think of anything to say and ended up finding something else to look at.

“…Rill’s a bit thirsty. At least we’re in Japan. There are vending machines everywhere.” She maneuvered her chair over to the nearest machine to buy a drink. “Do you want something, too? Is milk okay?”

“I’ll take a free drink, but don’t treat me like your pet dog.” I asked for a cola instead, and she agreed. I waited awhile, but she didn’t come back, so I turned around again.

Rill was still sitting in her wheelchair in front of the machine.

“Maybe I’ll file a complaint with Stephen, too,” I said.

I pressed a button in the vending machine’s top row, then handed the cola to her.

“Rill can’t handle fizzy drinks.”

“…Is milk okay?”

After that, as we sipped our drinks, we started to talk about what had happened ten days ago.

By the time I’d reached the stadium that night, Rill had been mortally wounded. No ordinary person would have been able to survive those injuries, but the medicine I’d gotten from Stephen had temporarily repaired her damaged organs.

“That’s why Rill managed that last jump with Freya.”

“Yeah. That must have been her wish, too.”

“…That was the promise we’d made.”

But after the promise had been fulfilled, the undead Freya had dropped in her tracks, falling asleep for the last time. Once the fight was over, Rill’s medicine had worn off and left her unable to move. She’d been taken straight to a hospital, Stephen had gone into surgery with her, and now here we were.

“So Rill has a lot to be grateful for,” she murmured, as if she was reminding herself.

She was right; she’d recovered far enough to be able to chat like this.

She’d paid a heavy price for her wish, though.

“He said Rill won’t ever walk again.”

Rill smiled as she said it. Or tried to anyway.

“Even Rill thinks it was dumb of her, but when she first heard the diagnosis, she asked Stephen if that meant she wouldn’t be able to pole-vault anymore, either. Isn’t it funny?” She laughed at herself. “Rill can’t walk, so there’s no way she could run or jump, but…”

I remembered the vault I’d seen her make ten days ago. That beautiful leap into the night sky… I’d never get to see that again.

“Frankly, though, Rill did luck out. She just assumed she was going to die. She’d prepared herself for it. She can’t walk, but she’s lucky to be alive…and so on…”

There was a trace of a smile on Rill’s lips, but when she saw my face, she quickly looked away. How awful had my expression been?

“Isn’t there anything they can do?” I managed. “Stephen Bluefield’s constantly defying common sense. He’s the Inventor. He’s saved my partners, who’ve meant so much to me, from death again and again. He even made an android.”

That had to mean there was nothing he couldn’t fix…

“He made Rill a proposal instead. He said he could make her prosthetic legs that looked and worked exactly the same as her own.”

“Prosthetics… Then—” Was Rill going to amputate her legs and have them replaced? Would that be…?

“But they’d only be ‘exactly the same’ as her real ones. That isn’t ‘real.’ They wouldn’t be Rill’s legs,” she declared. “Rill remembers everything. She ran, jumped, and competed with Freya on these legs. Rill takes pride in that. It means more to her than her life. Losing her legs isn’t an option.”

…Oh, right. Prosthetic legs might let her walk again, but to Reloaded, she wouldn’t be herself anymore.

Noches looked exactly the same as Siesta, but even if she’d been equipped with all her memories and her personality, she wouldn’t have been Siesta. Noches was Noches, and Siesta was Siesta. No one could take anyone else’s place.

“That means this is fine. I prefer it this way.” Rill gently stroked her legs. “I’m going to live with these legs.”

I couldn’t comment on her decision. There was no need.

“Oh, that’s right. Rill needed to say one more thing.”

She looked up at me.

“You’re still fired.”

I recognized those eyes from when we first met. As if she didn’t trust anyone.

She was wearing the same expression she’d worn back when she was picking fights with everyone.

“We spent a little while as partners, but you defied Rill, didn’t listen, and made her mad again and again. She’s firing you for violating your contract.” Rill averted her face in a huff. “Rill doesn’t need a familiar who won’t listen to his master. Even talking like this is… Well, today will be the last time. We’re only meeting now because Rill wanted to tell you that.”

She didn’t wait for me to respond. She said what she’d decided to say, almost without pausing for breath, and she’d stopped making eye contact.

She kept on complaining about me and saying we’d probably never see each other again, over and over. I waited through it, waited, and waited some more, until finally, Rill asked in a small voice, “Do you have any objections?”

I didn’t totally understand what she was feeling. We’d only really met a bit over a month ago. I hadn’t known her long enough to understand what she actually wanted to say, and unlike a literary-analysis question, I couldn’t just pick a random answer. And so—

“Huh?” Rill asked, bewildered.

—I knelt in front of her.

“No objections. But…”

Since I didn’t know her true feelings, the least I could do was make sure she knew mine.

“…the example the Magical Girl set was outstanding. When you vaulted, you were the most beautiful thing in the world. I’m proud that I got to work with you, Reloaded.”

I took her hand, and although I didn’t kiss it, I was honest about what I felt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rill laughed, but it wasn’t long before her expression dissolved into tears.

“I did it…all. It’s over.” Big tears fell from her jewellike eyes. “I can’t…run…or…vault…ever again…! Freya’s gone… Our enemy’s gone, too. There’s…nothing…left… It’s all gone…!”

Once the dam had crumbled, that was it. Her tears wouldn’t stop.

Reloaded had been so strong, but now she was crying, helpless in the face of her emotions.

Of course she was. After all the fighting was over, the Magical Girl was just a girl.

What could I say to her? Was it okay for me to say anything? I hesitated a little, but then I dried her tears.

“Rill. If you don’t have anything else lined up, would you help me?”

For just a moment, she stopped sobbing.

“The thing is, I’ve got a ton of problems to field. The world’s still full of enemies; Natsunagi and I have to fight vampires and the Phantom Thief… Plus, there’s a wish I need to make come true.”

Both my hands were already full, though. So were Natsunagi’s. But Rill had just finished her mission, and one of her hands was free. So…

“I won’t call you Lilia yet. I’ll keep calling you Reloaded. Would you work with us? As a hero?”

Rill’s eyes went wide. Then she bit her lip, looking down.

I waited for her to speak. To look up. I didn’t count how many seconds passed, how many minutes. I just kept waiting for her decision, and then—

“If Rill must.” Breaking the silence, Rill wiped her tears away. “She’ll be your partner a little while longer.”

“…Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Silence fell again, but this time, it was a rather comfortable sort.

“Rill does feel a little bad for your ex-girlfriend, though,” she joked; she was smiling again.

“Don’t let her hear you say that; I’ll never hear the end of it.” I smiled a little just as I heard the patter of approaching footsteps.

“Wha—? Uh, excuse me?”

Yeesh. Should’ve seen that coming, huh? Natsunagi, who’d apparently heard that exchange loud and clear, stepped into the waiting room.

“Goodness. Eavesdropping. That’s not a nice habit,” Rill told her.

“—! I only came by because I thought it would be all right for me to join you two soon!” Natsunagi looked away awkwardly. “And listen, we haven’t broken up!”

“We aren’t even going out.”

“I—I know that, okay?!”

Rill laughed at us. “You two really are dumb.”

I was sure her smile was for more than this moment. That smile included everything she’d experienced and all the things she’d seen.

Of course, that didn’t mean she’d accepted everything, or that she had her future totally planned out. Even so, she was smiling now, and she’d live with pride.

This was her story.

The tale of the Magical Girl, which was nowhere near over.