Sureiyazu

Episode 23: The Three Painters

"I don't know," Akuma told her,"I haven't seen them since we decided to stay split up for the night. We'll probably meet up later and we'll find out."

"Hey!" a perky voice exclaimed behind them.

"Hey, Yuri," Akuma smiled.

"You weren't supposed to wake up until I told you to," Yuri scolded the pair.

"Sorry," Mizuki laughed. "I didn't know."

"I told you when you were sleeping," Yuri said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Right, right," Akuma agreed hastily. "So - what should we do today?"

"Asking people stuff was boring," Yuri whined. "I don't wanna do that again."

"I second that," said Akuma.

"I . . . third that, I guess," said Mizuki.

"Yaaaaaaaaay!" Yuri cheered. "No more boring-stuff-iness!"

"So what should we do, then?" asked Mizuki.

"There isn't much left to do," Akuma pointed out. "Maybe we should just try to find the others, and see if they found anything out."

"Yay! Family reunion!" Yuri yelled happily.

"Do you ever wonder if even she knows what she's saying?" Mizuki muttered to Akuma.

All Akuma could do was shake her head. 

~~~

"Ow!" Kasai exclaimed. "Watch where you're go - Akuma! It's you!" 

"Yes, it's me," Akuma said, brushing herself off. "Why were you in such a hurry?" She glanced around the nearly empty streets of the town, which was still half-asleep, as if that would give her a clue.

"We were trying to find you guys," Heishi explained. "Um - uh, not that any of you are actually guys, huh?"

"Silly goose," Yuri giggled, "we were the ones looking for you."

"Well, we found each other in the end, so that's what matters," Aya said. "We found this . . . note."

"You did?" said Akuma eagerly.

Aya told Yuri, Muzuki, and Akuma what had happened and showed them the blood-splattered note. Mizuki looked quite sick when she saw it. ("Sorry, I . . . don't like blood," she said.)

"Did you find anything out?" Kasai asked. Yuri and Mizuki shook their heads.

"Well . . ." Akuma started uncertainly. "I guess I did find something . . ." She told the story of her encounter with the strange hooded man, growing more confident as she spoke. Why had she been so hesitant to tell them before? This was information they needed to know, it would help them find the people responsible for the very crime they were solving . . .

"This is insane," Aya said. "A secret organization . . . yet it would almost make sense . . ."

"But, wait," Mizuki told the group. "Don't hate me for saying this, but . . . can we really trust a hooded guy from a pub? I mean, he'd probably been drinking. And he might have been trying to lead us off the trail, anyway. Maybe it was someone he knows who did it? Maybe it was him? What if this Order doesn't even exist?"

"She has a point," Kasai agreed. "He could've been drunk and kind of thought he was telling the truth but it was all in his head sort of thing."

"Yeah," said Heishi. "Once I had a guy who'd been drinking come up to me and tell me he was the king." He sighed.