女面 - Bungo Stray Dogs Fanfiction

第二十五話

A/N: Apologies for the late update. The internet decided to disconnect by itself, and my laptop had betrayed me by crashing halfway. In the end, I lost half of my work last night. Anyway, hope you enjoy this chapter despite the lateness.

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"A hacker?" repeated Atsushi, as he climbed up the concrete staircase located at the public playground.

After a moment of Dazai wailing and latching onto Fumiko, with Kunikida and Atsushi kept trying to pry his deathly grip off her, the trio soon found themselves on their way to the man whom they were going to meet. "We're going to meet a pro information broker." elaborated the bespectacled man.

"A pro hacker..." trailed the silver-haired man with mild amazement.

"He was in our Agency once." added Fumiko.

"You two know him?" he asked.

"I wish I didn't, but yes." was Kunikida's reply.

From her blazer pocket, Fumiko pulled out a device stored inside a plastic ziplock bag. "Today, we need him to investigate this." she explained. "I would've had Rokuzou-kun to get the job done, but the boy is busy preparing for his college entrance exam."

"Isn't that Moby Dick's control terminal?" questioned Atsushi who found the device awfully familiar.

"The pressing issue is this." She then flipped it around, revealing the motherboard to him. What was prominent about it was the silver chip embedded at the top left side; an engraving of a wide-smiled face with two ears resembling a rat. "It's the remote control chip installed inside. Apparently, this took over at that moment and tried to crash Moby Dick into Yokohama."

"Whoever set it up used even the Guild and tried to destroy Yokohama." deduced Kunikida as the trio walked up the concrete staircase. "The only lead we have is this chip. We need to expose the mastermind before they make their next move."

Upon arriving at a traditional private apartment building, Kunikida led the other two detectives inside. As soon as he arrived at one of the doors located at the end of the corridor, he barged it - leaving his colleagues behind as they stared at him with dumbfounded expressions - and yelled, "Katai, it's me and Enchi-san! We're coming in! What's with all this trash?! I can't even walk in here! Get out of your bed once in a while and clean up your apartment!" As he walked inside while clearing up the trash bags, Atsushi and Fumiko carefully followed, eying the dimly lit apartment as they took note of the unwashed dishes left inside the sink, empty liquor bottles, and the bundles of rubbish bags scattered throughout the apartment.

Having enough, Kunikida swung open the shoji door at the end of the room and yelled, "You stupid shut-in!"

At the end of the room, there were about five monitors; three on the desktop shelf, while the other two were placed atop. Underneath the shelf was a row of CPUs. On each end of the shelf, there was a small server rack connected to these devices. This was the only room that was light up, given that the blue light came from the screens, along with the tiny green lights on the CPUs and other devices.

"I'm done for." grumbled the man hiding underneath the futon located in the center of the room.

"Again?" sighed the exasperated detective, seeming to have grown accustomed to this man's peculiar behaviour. "What now?"

"It's hell outside my bed." said Katai as he sat up, keeping the futon over his head. "Everything beautiful is beyond the clouds, and everything fun is at the bottom of the sea."

"Kunikida-san, Fumiko-san, is this him?" questioned Atsushi.

"Yes." answered the latter. "Katai-san's ability lets him use all electronics in his sight without touching them. His processing speed is ten times quicker than normal."