N. Chuuya X Fem! Reader: The Territory of Gravity

1.56 - The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency

"Oh, that sounds wonderful!" She placed the tray under her arm, then beamed rapturously. "Although I wonder if I could even come up with anything useful..."

"We're still in the early stages. Spitballing. Anything will do," Dazai assured her. "It can be something you're good at or familiar with, if you want."

"...!"

Kunikida shot Dazai a look pleading with him to shut up.

"Hmm... Let me think..."

Naomi tilted her head to the side while she pondered. A few moments went by before she blushed and offered three proposals.

Unfortunately, none of what she said could be written here.

The room was silent as everyone ate their meat buns. At this rate, the trial meeting was never going to end. Everyone started to come to the faint realization that conferences and debates just weren't their strong suits. They needed to find some common ground.

Written in black on the conference room whiteboard were eight ideas: "Handle a case," "Solve an in-house issue," "Hideyoshi Toyotomi," "Tear off eight fingers," "Hazing," "Crush Dazai," "fucking," and "These meat buns are delicious."

Tanizaki's internal battery was starting to die. While somewhat obvious that this would prove to be a tricky meeting, no one was expecting that agreeing on a single idea would be such a great challenge, nor did they anticipate the process of finding common ground to be so mundane. Building a sandcastle would have been a more constructive use of their time.

Tanizaki and Kunikida exchanged looks. They predicted this would happen. Their meeting earlier at the café was actually to plan for a situation like this. A meeting-response meeting. They considered what to do when meetings like this were going nowhere, and they specifically made sure to keep it a secret from Dazai. Kunikida seized this opportunity to speak up just as he'd planned earlier at the café.

"Dazai, how about narrowing down our choices? We have been stuck on step one for too long already. If we don't decide on something now, we'll be here all night. I'm not saying we have to choose one of the ideas on the board, but at least give us some basic direction."

"Huh? But arguing over such trifles together is fun. Let's keep this going all night!" Dazai beamed.

"Whether you're enjoying yourself or not is beside the point. We came here today for a reason," Kunikida said, sternly furrowing his brow. "Plus, we've got minors here, too. Hurry it up. All that's left for us to do is decide on an idea and delegate roles, right?"

"But we're still missing someone." Dazai scratched his head. "Ranpo-kun is not here, and we need everyone present before we can decide on the test. I wonder what he's doing this late at night? Maybe he's working on a tough case, and it's taking longer than he thought..."

"Oh!" Naomi placed a hand on her cheek. "Actually, Ranpo-San is in the office right now."

"Huh?" You blinked, surprised.

"I saw him when I was walking by a few moments ago. He was wrapped up in one of those puzzles that comes with the candy boxes."

"That's Ranpo for ya. Nothing fazes him," Dazai proceeded to compliment Ranpo for whatever reason.

Edogawa Ranpo, twenty-six years old, was the Armed Detective Agency's top detective and the brains of the operation. He possessed outstanding powers of observation and deduction for someone so ingenuous and simple in nature. Even then, he was impossible to figure out, and he yielded to no one. Ranpo was only willing to go out on a case so long as he alone solved it. Although he didn't mean any harm, he would tell anyone they were stupid even if it was their first time meeting, and he never hesitated to give someone a pat on the head—victim, perpetrator, you name it. And there wasn't a single case he couldn't solve. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he was the center pillar of the agency.