Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.07

  The village of the end

The next day, we headed back to the airport and caught another flight which took us to Rill’s hometown in a little under an hour.

Her family lived fairly deep in the countryside, so we had to take a few trains as well. With no time to do any proper sightseeing, we quickly boarded our first train.

“It sure is cold, huh?”

Although the heat in the train was on, it was below freezing outside. It was spring in Japan, but it might as well have been the dead of winter in Scandinavia.

“Don’t be such a wuss.” Rill, who was sitting in the seat opposite mine, took off her coat and laid it on her lap as if she were used to weather like this. “After all, we warmed up in the bath together yesterday.”

“…I forgot whatever it is you’re talking about.”

What happened after our conversation the previous day was over and done with, so I wasn’t going to get into it.

“Let’s go over this now: While Rill’s visiting her family, you’ll go to that village, right?”

“Yeah. I’m planning to have a Man in Black go with me—not that that should be a surprise.”

We were planning to split up after this. I’d head over to investigate the village for Marie, fulfilling my second objective for this trip. Rill had said it was about an hour’s drive from her parents’ house.

“Be really careful. Rill was only a child when she went there, so it’s an old memory, but she remembers the adults kept telling her to stay away from that village. They never really said why.”

She’d given me the same warning several times already on this trip. What exactly was waiting in that village?

“It’ll be fine. On the off chance that something does happen, I’ll have the Men in Black deal with it.”

“Rill bets the Men in Black won’t do anything but drive you there.”

…She might have been right about that. I suddenly started feeling uneasy. Should I take a weapon along, just in case?

“Well, it may be okay anyway,” Rill said, gazing at me. She smiled.

“That’s reassuring to hear, but do you have any grounds for saying it?”

“Yes. After all, you are the familiar of the great Reloaded, the ultimate magical girl.”

After that, we took two more trains to the last station on the line, where Rill and I parted ways. We each got into cars driven by Men in Black: Rill’s would take her home, while mine set off for the village.

The car traveled over mountain roads. We’d set out from a fairly rural town, but the further we drove, the fewer buildings and people we saw. The sun was beginning to set.

“Calling the Men in Black was the right move.”

It had rained heavily here the day before. The ground was muddy, and the footing was really bad. A normal taxi probably would have had a hard time on these roads.

An hour and a half after setting off from the station, the car came to a stop, which presumably meant we’d made it to the village. I got out of the car and walked a short distance, but when I took a look around at the landscape, my brain was flooded with question marks.

“What is this place?”

Wherever I looked, in every direction around me, all I saw was a vast plain. The white buildings from the picture of Marie’s hometown were nowhere to be seen. What I was looking at wasn’t a village, in any sense of the word.

The place did have something instead of houses, though: graves. They weren’t in the usual shape of crosses, but they were clearly grave markers, and there were tons of them. They seemed to cover the plain.

“Did Rill get the place wrong?”

She’d said she’d seen the village when she was a small child. It was possible that her memories of it were hazy, and what she’d actually seen wasn’t anything like what she’d described.

“What do you think?” Although I knew I wouldn’t get an actual answer, I turned, hoping for at least some sort of reaction—but the Man in Black who’d brought me here had vanished.

“How am I supposed to get back? He’d better come right away if I call him,” I grumbled. Just then—

“What’s this now? We don’t often get visitors around these parts.”

I turned around to see an old gentleman standing there. He was a little shorter than me, and he was dressed in a suit and leaning on a cane. He smiled at me.

“…Who are you?” I asked, backing up a couple of steps.

The old gentleman gave a troubled smile. “There’s only one reason anyone would come here.” He gestured to the countless graves; apparently, he’d come to visit one of them. “Or perhaps you have another reason?”

“Oh, uh, I’m—” What should I tell him? I would’ve been lying if I said I was visiting a grave, but answering honestly might only have made me seem suspicious. He had to know I wasn’t from around here just based on my appearance. It wouldn’t do me any good to make him needlessly wary of me.

…No. Maybe that wasn’t worth worrying about right now. I needed to stay focused on my objective. Reloaded always took the shortest possible route to achieve her goals.

“Actually, I’m looking for this village.” I showed the man the photo Marie had given me and told him I’d heard of a place near here that looked similar.

“Ah, you’re in the right place.” The old gentleman’s face creased sadly. “This wasn’t the same village as the one in that picture, but a people who share the same roots inhabited this area right up until just six months ago.”

“What happened six months ago?”

After a short pause, the old man continued. “The village was burned down…by a vampire.”

I hadn’t been expecting that, and it suddenly felt hard to breathe.

A vampire. Who’d have thought I’d hear that word here?

“I imagine that’s hard to believe. It’s true, though. Vampires are a cursed race that consumes human flesh and blood in an effort to extend their own short lifespans. A vampire appeared in this village half a year ago and killed everyone, even the women and children.” The man’s eyes appeared hollow. “That was no mere demon—but a devil. I was away on business the day it happened, but all of my relatives were here. My children and grandchildren should have lived long into the future, but every one of them died.”

The entire village had been burned, and all these people had been killed. A horrific incident like this would have been on the news in Japan, no matter what country it was in, yet I’d never even heard of it. Was it because vampires were involved? Maybe that was why it hadn’t been covered by the general media.

Six months ago, Reloaded had been overseas fighting all sorts of enemies of the world, so it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t heard about this, even though it had happened so close to her hometown.

“You lost your children and grandkids?”

“Yes. And my wife, my siblings… All my blood relations.”

The old gentlemen shook his head sorrowfully. He looked so miserable that any attempt at encouragement seemed meaningless. But one thing stuck out to me.

“You didn’t bring flowers?”

Normally, that wouldn’t have seemed odd enough to mention. Cultural and religious traditions varied between countries, and different people had different habits and ways of thinking as well. It wasn’t my place to say anything if this gentleman wasn’t offering flowers at his family members’ graves. Only—

“Do I look that strange?” the man said with a wry smile.

I knew how people behaved in situations like this, when they’d lost someone important to them. Saikawa, Rill, Natsunagi…and me as well, maybe. In any case, I just couldn’t picture this old gentleman as someone who was visiting his family’s graves after having lost them in a tragedy. I couldn’t really put it into words, but his face was just wrong somehow. There was no other way to describe it.

“How did you get here?” I asked him. “I didn’t hear a car.”

Had he walked along the mountain road, leaning on that cane, all by himself? The ground was a mess after the rain from the day before, yet there was no mud on his slacks or shoes.

No human could’ve done that.

“I see. That explains it.” In other words… “You’re a vampire, aren’t you?”

“Well, well. Imagine that: prey that talks.”