Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.02

  Urban legends don’t end

After leaving the hospital, Natsunagi and I headed for the station.

It was twilight, and we walked along slowly, side by side, feeling the chill in the air.

“What did you think about that, Kimizuka?” Natsunagi asked suddenly. “If Stephen’s right, we may be able to save her life. But…”

“But when Siesta wakes up, she may not be the person we know.”

She’d have no memories of the thoughts she’d had or the emotions she’d felt—nothing. When she revived, she’d probably even have lost the code name “Siesta,” and who would she be then? Who could call that “coming back to life”?

“I’m sorry,” Natsunagi apologized quickly. “It’s a question I can’t answer, so I went and asked you instead.”

Right: There was no easy answer here. That said, we wouldn’t be allowed to leave things like this, either. At some point in the future, we’d have to make a decision.

“Listen, Kimizuka, what do you want to study at university?”

“Wow, that came out of nowhere.”

Natsunagi had suddenly changed the subject. I gave it some thought, but I didn’t have a ready answer for that one, either. “All I did was study for the entrance exam, so I don’t have much of a concept of what real learning is like.”

“That’s an incredibly calm, cutting self-evaluation… Universities are more about research than education, all right?”

“Yeah, I know that. You want to study psychology, don’t you?”

I thought I remembered Natsunagi telling me that before. She had probably decided what she wanted to do, then chosen a university accordingly.

“Yeah. I want to study the human mind more systematically, instead of just relying on emotional arguments,” Natsunagi said, walking a step ahead of me. “Then I’ll try observing my own heart logically, from all sorts of angles, since I don’t really understand it. That sounds kind of fun, don’t you think?”

…So that was her plan, huh? Natsunagi must have been thinking about our current situation when she’d said that.

The white-haired detective I knew so well had once used banter and humming to banish her worries. The current detective was the same way. Natsunagi’s back looked reliable, but it didn’t feel okay to just tag along behind her, so I sped up until I was by her side.

“—Miss Detective?”

Just then, a clear, musical voice called out from behind us.

If angels existed, they might have had voices like this—that was how beautiful and shocking it was. I couldn’t move. It wasn’t fear that froze me in place. It was awe.

“I said, ‘Miss Detective.’ You can hear me, can’t you?”

The tone of the voice changed a bit, taking on a graceful lilt.

Natsunagi and I turned around.

A woman was standing there.

She wore white high heels and a white dress, with lithe limbs as pale as snow. There was one other color that drew our eyes, though: black, the color of the parasol in her hands.

“May I ask a question?” Holding the parasol so that it hid most of her face, the woman showed us a photo. “Are you familiar with the location in this photograph?”

I grabbed Natsunagi’s hand and booked it. Natsunagi didn’t even seem surprised; she must have been thinking the same thing.

“Natsunagi, that’s—”

“…The Parasol Witch.”

It was the urban legend we’d been talking about at school. The woman who would show you a photo of a landscape, and if you couldn’t tell her where it was, she’d curse you to death. I hadn’t taken the story seriously, of course. But before I knew it, my legs had bailed and taken the rest of me with them.

“Did you get a look at the photo?” I asked Natsunagi as we ran.

“Just a glimpse. I don’t think it was a photo of a place, though; it looked more like a photo of a watercolor painting.”

“Yeah, that’s what it looked like to me, too. Either way, you didn’t recognize the landscape, did you?”

Natsunagi shook her head. That meant we couldn’t answer the witch’s question, either.

“So she kills people with a cursed song…?”

Was that really true, though? How? Still, beings that defied common sense really did exist—like all of Pandemonium, for example. Whether or not it was true, we needed to buy time to calm down and think this through…

“Why do you run from me?”

I thought my heart might stop. She’d gotten ahead of us somehow; when we turned the corner, the witch was right there.

Her question sounded more like an assertion that she wasn’t about to let us get away, and we froze up again.

“…What are you?”

Was she human, a witch, a monster, an alien…or something else?

Just then, a car pulled up right next to us. The rear door burst open, and a familiar voice said, “Kimizuka! Nagisa! Get in, please!”

“Yui?!” Natsunagi said, startled. Saikawa was in the back seat, dressed in casual clothes.

There was no time to hesitate. Natsunagi and I scrambled into the car, which promptly sped off. The Saikawa family’s chauffeur was at the wheel.

“Thanks, you saved our butts. What are you doing here, Saikawa?”

“I just stopped by the hospital. I thought I’d visit Siesta, and hoped I might get to see you two as well. Congratulations on your graduation.”

She’d come all the way here just to tell us that? Saikawa enjoyed pestering me for fun, but deep down, she really was a devoted junior.

“By the way, Kimizuka, you seem to be missing the second button of your uniform.”

“You noticed that, huh? Well, even I’ve got a fan or two, you know.”

“I was only surprised that such an old-fashioned custom still existed. The girl in question must have been an exceptionally quaint, starry-eyed character.”

“Okay, Saikawa. Let’s not talk about this anymore.”

In the seat next to me, Natsunagi’s expression had gone stiff, and she was staring at her lap.

“By the way, Kimizuka, who on earth was that back there? It seemed like a bit of an emergency, so I called out to you on impulse, but…”

“We don’t actually know, either. We think she’s an urban legend that’s been going around this area: the Parasol Witch—”

Just then, the car braked suddenly, and we all pitched forward. I looked out the windshield, wondering what was going on, but no one was there. Instead, the door to the passenger seat opened.

“The ‘Parasol Witch.’ A rather unpleasant name, don’t you think? I’m not fond of it myself,” the woman in the white dress said as she got into the car. She sounded as if she were talking about someone else. She’d replaced her parasol with a large hat, but I still couldn’t see her face. There obviously wasn’t any point in trying to run.

“What do you want?” I asked, speaking for all of us.

The witch gave a small sigh. “I already told you. I wanted to know if you recognized the landscape in that photograph, but you just ran off. How mean,” she said petulantly.

I could see her lips in the rearview mirror. She seemed to be around thirty.

“Or is that it? The detective can’t listen to what the witch has to say?” She was talking to Natsunagi now. “Are you the type to judge a person based on their title?”

“Of course not!” Natsunagi protested on reflex. Then she asked, “Do you have business with me? …With the detective?”

She was asking if the woman needed her, specifically. Whether no one else would do.

It was true that the witch had singled out Natsunagi, calling her “Miss Detective.”

“Yes. I came to meet you not as a witch, but as a client.” In the rearview mirror, the woman tilted up the brim of her hat and smiled. “Say, Miss Detective. Would you find my lost hometown for me?”