Tantei wa Mou, Shindeiru - Volume 9 - Chapter 4.03

This is the proper way to pick a fight

On our second day in Hokkaido, Natsunagi and I left the hotel early in the morning and headed further north.

It took us more than five hours by express train and car to reach our destination. We tried to kill time by chatting, but the trip was so long that the conversation trailed off naturally several times.

“You need to get better at small talk, Kimizuka,” Natsunagi said critically. We were in the back seat of a car, finally just ten kilometers from our destination. “Someday, when you’re at an amusement park with a girl, and you’re standing in line for an attraction, you should have a way to keep her from getting bored.”

For some reason, she was worried about a future date I hadn’t even scheduled. I wanted to set her mind at ease on that front. “I’ve actually already been in a situation like that with a girl, ages back, but I just told her all about the attractions, the merch, and the parade, and she listened without saying a word.”

“Yes, because she was fed up. Poor Siesta,” Natsunagi murmured.

How weird. I hadn’t said anything about it being Siesta.

Still, talking about that had taken the tension out of my shoulders.

“Seriously, though, the Federation Government officials better be here.”

The day before, Natsunagi had made contact with the Information Broker, Bruno Belmondo, and had managed to get him to tell her where the government officials were. From what he’d said, several of them were currently at a house on a cape in northeastern Hokkaido for a conference, so we were planning to drop in on them.

“It’s all thanks to you being proactive, Natsunagi. That was a huge help.”

I could never have gotten here on my own. Today, we’d finally managed to take a big step toward getting Siesta back from Scarlet.

“I haven’t been able to do much before now, either, so that’s true for both of us.”

I thought Natsunagi was selling herself short…but I guess detectives and their assistants have to share the stage equally.

“Still, who’d have figured government officials would just happen to be nearby right now?”

They weren’t just in Japan; they were in the same prefecture. Talk about a windfall. It was almost as if they’d timed their conference to match our visit…

“What do you think, Kimizuka? Is it coincidence, or fate?”

“No idea. It could also be that predisposition of mine.”

Still, the original reason we’d come here had been to see the Information Broker. We’d headed up north because that was where Bruno was, so in a way, you could say we’d been guided by his movements and intentions.

Why had he chosen now to visit Japan? What had made him decide to meet Natsunagi? His actions couldn’t have been guided by someone else, could they? And maybe that someone had also been—

“Kimizuka, I think we’re here.”

The car stopped. The cape seemed deserted, and when we got out of the car, I could hear the waves breaking fiercely against the rocks. A small brick house sat at the tip of the dreary peninsula.

“Natsunagi, how do we get in?”

“You cut straight to the ‘improv’ part of the show… Can’t we just ring the doorbell like normal people?”

“What are you talking about? If we do that, they’ll underestimate us.”

“Why are you trying to compete with government officials?” Natsunagi gave me a disgusted look.

What choice did we have, though? After all, what we were about to do was…

“Because we’re here to pick a fight,” I said, and kicked in the door.

“Hey, that was actually kinda cool. It gave me tingles.”

“I’m glad. My leg’s all tingly now, too.”

Inside the house, seven government officials were seated around a long table. Some were in suits, while others were dressed in kimonos, but all of them wore masks. As their eyes focused on us, I spotted a familiar figure.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, Ice Doll.”

I’d never seen her real face, but I thought she must be pretty old. Of this group, she was the one who’d interacted the most with the Ace Detective.

“This seems rather hostile,” Ice Doll said. Yet her voice was calm, and she didn’t rise from her chair. If we were coming to pick a fight, shouldn’t we have brought guns or something?

“So the Federation Government meets up on the sly and has secret talks like this, all while you’re pushing everything onto the Tuners?”

“We don’t feel we’re pushing anything onto you. The Federation Government and the Tuners are independent organizations. We simply trust you to handle things.”

They were contrived words, completely devoid of emotion.

“In that case, then who exactly is at war with one of the Tuners they ‘trust’?” Natsunagi shot back.

The Vampire and the Federation Government were all-out enemies at this point.

“We didn’t want to let the matter become this serious, you know. The Vampire was acting ominously well before we made the difficult decision to go to war. The fact that things turned out this way was unfortunate, if not inevitable.”

“You make it sound as if it’s got nothing to do with you. What caused the rift between the government and Scarlet in the first place?” As Elizabeth had said, the Federation Government might have been planning to wipe out Scarlet along with the rest of the vampires, but even then… “There’s some other secret between you two, isn’t there?”

Ice Doll didn’t respond. Still, Natsunagi and I had come all this way to get an answer to that question.

“As I’m sure you people know, Siesta’s been taken to the Nightless Castle. There’s no way we can stay out of this.”

“You’re planning to get the former Ace Detective back?”

“It’s not for myself, but for the world.”

Losing Siesta would be a loss for all mankind, the whole world, the entire universe.

“Then what if her death became something that would benefit the world? What would you do then?”

For a moment, Ice Doll’s question made me feel like I was suffocating.

If there was a scenario where Siesta’s death would benefit the world…

If there came a day when I had to choose between the world and Siesta…

Was there even any point to a question like that? Could that even happen?

“As the world’s one and only Singularity, there may come a time when you must make that choice.” Ice Doll’s masked face stared at me.

If the sort of thing she was talking about actually happened, and if I was the one in charge of making that decision, then I wouldn’t just be the protagonist of some story. I’d be—

“That’s enough obfuscation, all right?” Natsunagi stepped forward to take my place. “We don’t have any time to waste. So tell us: What is the real nature of your relationship with Scarlet?”

I got the feeling that Natsunagi’s red eyes had flashed.

Immediately, the other government officials all started to rise, but Ice Doll reined them in.

“Ice Doll, you just said yourself that the Federation Government and the Tuners are independent organizations. Don’t think I’ll always obey your orders. I’ll decide my own actions.”

Natsunagi’s words were far more ferocious than kicking down a door.

“—Fifteen years ago, I appointed that man as the Vampire,” one of the officials said. He hadn’t removed his mask, but from his build and his deep voice, I could tell he was an older man. He introduced himself by the code name “Odin.”

“Both then and now, Scarlet’s only desire was the safety of a single girl.”

Had Natsunagi’s word-soul spurred him to talk, or did he have reasons of his own? Odin began to recount the past.

“That man came to me with a certain contract: He would accept the mission to destroy all the vampires, and in exchange, he wanted me to guarantee the life of that girl.”

This was a little different from what Scarlet had told us a month ago. He hadn’t mentioned a girl, only that he’d become a Tuner to defeat evil vampires like the one who’d destroyed his town.

“…I guess there’s no way he would’ve been honest about everything.” I’d thought Scarlet was being genuine, telling me about his past, but he’d only been deceiving me.

“Kimizuka, that girl whose life Scarlet wanted guaranteed…,” Natsunagi whispered.

“Yeah. It’s probably Siesta,” I whispered back.

Considering Scarlet’s recent actions, that seemed to be the logical conclusion. For ages now, he’d been calling Siesta his “bride candidate” and acting obsessed with her. Did that mean there was still some relationship between them that I didn’t know about?

“Then are you saying Scarlet caused the vampire rebellion because that first contract he made with you was broken?” Natsunagi asked Odin.

“You may interpret it like that. Recently, that girl—although she’s grown significantly now—has fallen into circumstances where it can’t be claimed she’s ‘safe,’ and Scarlet says we’ve breached the contract. However, her current situation was unintentional on our part. We’re at a loss over it ourselves.”

“…So that’s what this conference is about? You’re trying to come up with a plan?”

Either way, I was starting to get a picture of the situation.

Why had Scarlet chosen now to rebel against the Federation Government? Most likely because Siesta, the girl who was supposed to be his bride, had fallen into critical condition due to the effect of that seed. He was angry because the Federation Government had guaranteed her safety in their contract, but not followed through…

“No, wait.”

I rejected the hypothesis I’d formulated.

That couldn’t be it. It had to be something else.

After all, Siesta’s condition wasn’t recent. She’d fallen asleep in early autumn of last year. And the year before that, she’d actually died.

“In that case, why didn’t Scarlet launch his rebellion then?”

That was weird. This shouldn’t only be happening now. It meant Scarlet wasn’t rebelling because Siesta was in danger.

“Are we still missing a piece of this puzzle?”

Were Ice Doll and Odin hiding something?

“I see. We had the wrong idea.” Natsunagi’s eyes widened. The detective had formed a new theory, one step ahead of me.

“Siesta isn’t Scarlet’s real bride.”