Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 8 - Chapter Ep1

An epilogue from the future

“That’s the story of the time I spent as Reloaded’s partner two years ago.”

In the Shirogane Detective Agency, after I’d finished telling that old story to Nagisa, Siesta, and Noel, I took a break for some tea. I’d taken a few breaks in the middle of my story as well, and this was my third cup.

Remembering that time always made my heart ache a bit, but it wasn’t all unpleasant. Even now, the month I’d spent with Rill was a precious memory.

“Kimihiko, you always wear that expression when you talk about that.” Nagisa was watching me with a slightly troubled smile. What expression did she mean? I couldn’t tell.

“By the way, Siesta. Sorry about that,” I apologized casually.

Siesta tilted her head slightly, as if she didn’t know what I meant.

“Remember? Back when we attended that Federal Council together and Rill tried to recruit me as her partner, you got mad.”

What had she said again? That we’d made a lifetime employment contract, so I wasn’t allowed to be anyone else’s partner. I’d ended up breaking that contract.

“I’m not really upset. Actually, the way you put that makes it sound as if I used to be obsessed with you.”

“Oh, sorry. I got that wrong. It wasn’t just back then, huh?”

“Ah right, I’m still obs— Are you stupid, Kimi? Don’t make me use myself as the punch line.”

Siesta seemed pretty unhappy that I’d made her break character.

“You know, I think Siesta could do really well as the butt of our jokes, too,” said Nagisa.

“Hey, now there’s an idea,” I replied. “I like it. Siesta, you polish that skill and I’ll cheer you on.”

“This is my detective agency, you know…”

Siesta’s employees had begun to pick on her, and Noel giggled, holding the tea snacks out to us. There was no telling what this tableau meant.

“…And what did you think of being the Magical Girl’s partner, Assistant?” Siesta asked.

“Frankly, there wasn’t much I could give her, and it’s not like Rill taught me everything, either. There was a lot about the way she did things that I wasn’t happy with.”

Until the very end, Rill and I had had different approaches to problem-solving. We also hadn’t found a point of compromise and developed mutual understanding. We’d tried working on our communication once, and it hadn’t gone well. That was probably why we’d never become partners in the truest sense of the word. …Still.

“Still, I’ll never forget watching her as she fought for her wish.”

That was the one thing I was sure of.

Nagisa must have been watching Rill’s back just the way I had. She nodded, remembering.

“Miss Reloaded attended the Ritual of Sacred Return, didn’t she?” Noel said, thinking back to last month.

“Yeah. She stayed involved with the world as a Tuner after the incident I just told you about. She’s helped us, too.”

That was why I still hadn’t called her “Lilia.” She really should have been able to leave her Reloaded code name behind after the ceremony last month, but Bruno’s unexpected rebellion had postponed that as well.

“…To me, that was an unfamiliar story. More than that, it aroused my deepest sympathies. I and the other members of the Federation Government know far too little about the situation in the field.” Noel hung her head in frustration for a moment, then promptly looked up again. “I will testify as well. I’ll bear witness to the story that Miss Reloaded lived as the Magical Girl.”

Yeah. I wanted as many people as possible to remember how she’d lived, too.

“But, Kimihiko, I think that was also your story.” Nagisa glanced up at me from the seat next to mine. “It was the same way with the Ritual of Sacred Return as well. You always follow the path you chose for yourself.”

Hearing Nagisa put it into words made me think. Maybe the start really was two years ago. Maybe that was when my series of choices had truly begun.

“—Well. Let’s move on to the main topic, shall we?”

The mood in the room changed slightly as Siesta put her fingertips together. “I had one reason for having our assistant relate that old story: I wanted to examine the discrepancies in our memories and the world’s records.”

The story that revolved around Reloaded had revolved around one more large axis. I’d realized as much as I was telling it, and the others hadn’t missed it, either.

“Several terms and quotes in your story caught my attention.”

Siesta showed us a piece of paper. It held notes she’d taken with a fountain pen as she listened to my story: a list of remarks made by three different people.

“The government isn’t currently attempting to declare the Phantom Thief an enemy of the world.”

“As the Singularity, that’s your mission, you know.”

“Even you don’t want to get dragged into the war over the Akashic records, do you?”

Those lines had been spoken by Mia, Rill, and Ice Doll. They’d all come up in the story I’d just told.

However—

“It isn’t just ‘the Akashic records.’ I had absolutely no memory of the Phantom Thief, who was supposedly one of the Tuners, or of your identity as the Singularity.”

Siesta seemed to be mulling this over. Noel nodded in sympathy. On top of that…

“I didn’t, either. In your story, though, I probably knew those things as a matter of course,” Nagisa said. She seemed a little confused by the mismatch between that and her own perceptions. “But it’s weird. Even after hearing your story, Kimihiko, nothing feels wildly inconsistent. Like, I was familiar with words and concepts like ‘the Akashic records’ and ‘the Singularity’ long ago, but I can’t really remember what they mean or explain them.”

“I’m the same as Nagisa. ‘The Akashic records,’ ‘the Singularity,’ the ‘Phantom Thief’… They sound unfamiliar now, but the story you told doesn’t seem crazy, either. Something isn’t adding up, but it feels like it does. As if someone’s forced me to find it convincing.”

Siesta looked up at the ceiling. It was as if she was searching for some invisible enemy, for whoever had made her this way.

“Mr. Kimihiko, did you remember all that?” Noel asked me. It was a perfectly natural question to ask the narrator.

However…

“No, I think I’d forgotten the whole time, too. It’s just that touching this thing made me remember.”

I pointed at an object. The other three looked at it, and their eyes widened. It was the object Noel had shown us as a memento of Bruno. The thing that looked like a ritual implement.

“When I touched that, I saw the past.”

I couldn’t explain the logic, but it was similar to the way I’d seen potential futures when I’d touched the sacred text last month. Whatever this enigmatic bronze-colored pyramid was made of had pulled back those missing memories for me.

“Then do you know what the Akashic records are, Kimihiko?”

“No, not yet. All I remember is what was in the story I just told you.”

In other words, I hadn’t recalled everything about the true nature of “the Singularity,” the identity of the enemy known as “the Phantom Thief,” or “the Akashic records,” which were supposed to be the secret of the world.

“There’s still a ton I don’t remember.”

To be more accurate, forgetting wasn’t quite the right word. It didn’t feel the way forgetting the truth of Siesta’s death had. My memory of the terms “the Singularity,” “the Phantom Thief,” and “the Akashic records” was fuzzy at best, as were the events surrounding them, but for some reason, my memories all seemed to be in place. Something was making me feel this was natural.

It was just as Siesta had said: It felt like the inconsistencies, the warped places, were being forcibly compensated for.

“But why were you the only one who remembered something when you touched that? Was it thanks to that Singularity trait?” Nagisa asked.

“I think you could rephrase that as the fault of that Singularity trait, but maybe?” I shrugged. Apparently, the past me hadn’t fully understood his Singularity nature, either. Now, two years later, it was yanking me around again.

“Still, if touching this mystery object made our assistant recall memories from a certain time period, there may be other things that would have a similar effect out there,” said Siesta.

“Oh, that’s right,” Nagisa said. “The White Tengu said something like that, too.”

They had both noticed the hint at almost the same time.

In the story I’d told, the White Tengu—the leader of Pandemonium—had said that this world held several devices for recording its past and future. Maybe our forgotten memories and the world’s lost records were stored in places like this object.

“Look at this.” Siesta picked up the pyramid. “There are square hollows on the underside. Doesn’t it look like a three-dimensional puzzle?”

“…Yeah. Meaning there are more parts out there somewhere.”

Siesta nodded.

Finding those missing pieces and putting them together would probably restore the world’s lost memories. Bruno had left the first step in that direction behind as our inheritance.

“Grandfather…” Noel accepted the object from Siesta and hugged it to her chest.

“As things stand, we can’t count on our memories. We won’t be able to use the things we’ve fought with up till now: our brains and our experience. On top of that, we don’t even know who we’re fighting,” Nagisa said, summing up the situation.

In that case, what should we—the detectives and their assistant—do next?

“Our course is set, then.”

Siesta, president of the Shirogane Detective Agency, rose to her feet.

She walked over to the window, then turned back to face us.

“Let’s go on a journey to unlock the world’s secrets.”

She was smiling. The hand she held out to us had always shown us the way.

“Yeah, you know, I was just starting to get bored with our ordinary routine,” I said.

Nagisa Natsunagi got up. She seemed resigned, but maybe enjoying herself a bit as well. “I guess I’ve got no choice! This is a detective’s job, too, isn’t it?”

What would be waiting for us? Would it be pseudohumans, aliens, vampires, or some enemy we’d never seen before?

The genre of this incident was undeclared.

That was nothing new; the detectives had always tackled mysteries that were a crazy mix of things.

But in the end, I was sure the ultimate mystery would be the puzzle hidden in the world itself.