Bungo Stray Dogs: Dazai's Entrance Exam

Chapter 3

The twelfth.

The morning after a night spent in transit.

I spent half the night alone without slumbering, squatting in my anger under a solitary light.

The innumerable dead, and yet the even more innumerable living.

There is no difference between them and myself, and although each man is given one corner of heaven to himself, there is no man who has ever returned once vanished into the infinitude of heaven.

God, I beg of you to return them to me.

“Let us begin the company-wide debriefing.”

I addressed those seated at the table before me.

This was a reception room which doubled as the company’s meeting room. Office staff and detectives alike sat about the table with a total of seven of us in attendance. We were not quite at our full strength, as it was extremely rare for our full lineup to meet in a single room.

I consulted my papers and then began explaining.

“Please refer to the documents you have on hand for the particulars of this incident. Excuse me for this summary, but the Agency has received a targeted threat and is presently also under attack from a cruel and thorough scandal.”

The Agency’s exclusive doctor, Dr. Yosano, spoke up. “Everyone here knows about the Agency’s poor press. Tell us about the bomb case.”

“Very well. We received this threatening email earlier. Please read it so we may determine its sender.”

I distributed copies of the email. The letter was written in the polite manner as follows:

Dear Sirs and Madams,

I pray this letter finds everyone at the Agency  in good health.

I am deeply grateful for your most expedient efforts in the matter of investigating that building a few days ago. I apologize for making another request so soon after the first, but I really must ask this one thing of you.

I have placed a rather large-scale explosive at a certain location in the nearby area. I should like to employ you to please locate and remove the bomb for the sake of the city’s safety.

Furthermore, the bomb is programmed to detonate by sundown tomorrow, so I do hope you will resolve the matter within this time limit.

The bomb I have manufactured is the twin to a bomb in a certain case which robbed some hundred people of their lives. These casualties were an extremely sorrowful thing.

There will be an unquenchable flame as bright as if the sun had fallen to Earth. Nearby buildings will crumble to their foundations; people will attempt to flee while on fire. The roads will melt, and fragments of exploded cars will lodge in the ruins of blazing buildings. The world will become like Hell. I beg of your Agency to put in your best efforts so that Yokohama will not be reduced to this nightmare.

Forgive me my redundancies, but as in my previous request, I will have images recorded of your actions. If in the unfortunate situation that the bomb is not disabled in time, the images will be released in order to place the blame on your company. My apologies for this, but I do hope you understand.

In closing, I pray for your continued health and good fortune.

Yours,

The Azure Apostle

“... What a revolting letter,” Dr. Yosano spat.

“Exactly so. If you recall the surveillance equipment we found in the ruined hospital a few days ago, it’s apparent that this ‘Azure Apostle’, as he calls himself, is the person who leaked those reputation-ruining images and the one behind this bomb threat. It appears his goal is to broadcast our failure to the world at large if we cannot find and defuse the bomb.”

The president said calmly, “Then he means to destroy our good-standing?”

“I would say as much.”

The Agency had overcome more than its fair share of difficulties over the years. We refused to surrender to levels of violence even divisions of well-seasoned soldiers could not handle.

But we were still a commercial enterprise, and we were kept afloat by our clients’ trust in us. We could not afford to fall prey to this scandal. If the news that we failed to defuse this bomb had spread too far and we had ended up facing judicial intervention, the Agency’s reputation would have plummeted, and our name would have been forever soiled by this situation we had been driven into.

“Our immediate goal must be to determine the bomb’s location.”

“The office staff will look into locations from where an explosion could cause upwards of a hundred casualties. But Yokohama is filled with train stations, skyscrapers, and the like; it will be next to impossible to search them all in our time limit.”

“How about tracing the security footage back to the source?”

Certainly, as it said in the letter, the criminal must have needed to capture footage in order to broadcast the Agency’s failure to the public. That meant hidden equipment, as in the previous case.

However-

“If the recording equipment, or even wiretapping equipment, is of the new battery-powered variety, then it’s possible it can record video and sound for a few days without charge. The equipment could also be as small as a pen or a die, and even then it could still transmit data right up to the explosion. It could very well prove to be harder to find than the bomb itself. But for the sake of caution, let us ask the manufacturers about any large purchases of these objects-”

There was no good solution to our plight.

“Does this ‘Azure Apostle’ title correspond to any criminal that we’re aware of?”

“Not that I know of at the moment.”

The “Azure Apostle”. This case differed from the first by the culprit identifying themselves as such. I did not know if this carried any significance.

To review the situation, this “Azure Apostle” person was someone with a large knowledge of bombs and a plan to cause the Agency’s downfall for some reason.

“For the time being, I am having a bomb expert be contacted and a list of those with grudges on the Agency drawn up.”

“Have you not spoken to Ranpo yet?” Dr. Yosano asked.

Yes, the president himself should have contacted Ranpo, but-

“We cannot reach him right now. He is in the middle of a case in Kyuushuu. There are plans for him to return to Yokohama, but it will be challenging for him to arrive in time to help,” the president said, crossing his arms.

This “Ranpo” that Dr. Yosano mentioned was none other than Ranpo Edogawa, an ability user known as the Agency’s best detective. He had a marvellous ability called Super Deduction which allowed him to spot the truth in any case, be it a murder, assault, or abduction. Were Ranpo present, this case would have been solved in minutes. However, he was unfortunately occupied in Kyuushuu in a case for a government official. He could not immediately return to Yokohama until he completed the bizarre murder case he was currently embroiled in, in which a white-haired corpse came to life and murdered both its wife and dear friend.

The president spoke up once more. “Is there no way to question the taxi driver while he is in police custody?”

“He is currently on the police’s specialty air transfer craft. They are holding him in isolation to keep him safe from Mafia assassins, so it would be a trick to meet with him.”

Even the Mafia could do little when their target was suspended above their heads. But in the process of protecting him, we lost our access to gathering information as well.

“I shall have a word with the police’s secret intelligence department. I will make them establish a line of communication with the aircraft and write the answers to our questions.”

“I will collect all the letters at once.”

I found it hard to believe the taxi driver was the Azure Apostle. The man had no reason to tell the Agency the whereabouts of the confined kidnapping victims. It seemed more like someone else turned him in than anything else. But still, even with that, there was some connection between the driver and the Azure Apostle.

In any case, I expected he knew something pertinent.

“Listen to me, everyone. This case is a cowardly attack against the Armed Detective Agency. Our investigation will be two-fold. First, discover the Azure Apostle responsible for the attack, and second, neutralize the bomb. Our top priority is the bomb’s deactivation within the time limit. If we fail to find this bomb and human lives are lost, then we will be unworthy to call ourselves detectives. You must understand that this is not a matter of your pride as members of this company, but as individuals. Let the investigation commence.”

At the president’s command, we rose as once and rushed to our duties.

The investigation began with such frenzy that there was scarce time to breathe. The deadline was this very sunset. In that short time period, we had to sniff out a bomb somewhere in the city without knowing its location. There simply wasn’t enough time.

I was struck by a memory in the middle of my search and placed a call. The boy Rokuzou was tracing the source of the first email. If he were to discover the truth of that particular mystery, then this case could be resolved at the same time.

Rokuzou picked up after letting the phone ring for a long time.

“Heeeey… this is Taguchi. Thanks for…” He let out a huge yawn. “Thanks for waiting. What’s up?”

“Quit playing games with me. This is an emergency.”

“What…? Is this Specs? What time do you think it is, man? It’s still nine am.”

“Only you would be so unprofessional as to be asleep at nine am. Early to bed and early to wise, I tell you.”

“What’re you lecturing me for? Who are you, my dad?”

“No. I-”

Can’t replace your father.

I bit back those words before they came from my mouth.

“At any rate, the situation has changed. We must find the sender of that letter as soon as possible. Have you made any progress on it?”

“Nope. It’s harder than I thought it would be. I’ll cut the tech jargon, but basically, it’s got some trick that makes it that no matter how many times I make it connect to the network hub, I can’t find the origin. This isn’t an amateur prank you’ve got on your hands.”

I had already confirmed from first-hand experience that this person was no amatuer.

“I received a second email from the same source. Would you be able to pinpoint the source from that one?”

“There’s a good chance, but I can’t say for sure. - Well, it’s not like I haven’t got any other options.”

“What do you mean?”

“See, I can sneak an attacking program into the hub. And from there I can back-trace the email to its source. But it’d take me a long time. Also, it’s just a little illegal.”

“I’m not concerned with its legality. That’s a trifling matter in the face of this situation. Do it.”

“Oh ho. Are you sure? That’s an odd thing to say for ol’ neat-freak Specs. This conversation’s being recorded, you know. Whatcha think about trading the record of the time I infiltrated the Agency for this convo?”

“I’ll give it to you, so make haste.”

From the start, we never intended to turn the record over to the authorities. My slip of the tongue was done on purpose as a pretext for creating an exchange, but it seemed the boy did not realize that.

“You’re a generous guy, Specs. Make sure you pay my fee for this separate job.”

And with that, he hung up on me.

I held the receiver and spent a moment in contemplation.

There was no time to waste on sentimentality. My top priority was the bomb. The amount of casualties would have been catastrophic if the deadline passed. But that being said, we lacked any clues to go off of.

Dammit, where the devil had Dazai gotten off to at a time like this?

I soon found Dazai in the shopping district.

He was running his mouth off with a woman in an old-fashioned coffee shop facing the road.

“Is this your first time here in Yokohama? I can show you around if you’d like.”

“Oh my, I couldn’t… Would it really be all right for me to monopolize your time? I thought the Agency was dreadfully busy in light of this bomb threat. Mr. Kunikida was up ever so early coordinating the investigation, you see.”

“Kunikida is a demon at work. Do you know what I mean? If he has an appointment at noon, he’ll arrive within ten seconds of it. He’s as punctual as a railway train.”

“My… is he really?”

“Now, look here, Dazai! Enough playing hooky. And quit using me as a topic to hit on women with!”

“Later, okay? So you know, when were at the abandoned hospital, Kunikida was so scared at a woman’s ghostly voice that he sc-”

“Listen to me!”

Dazai went right back to cheerfully twittering away at Miss Sasaki, so I delivered a ringing thump to the back of his head.

“Ow! What was that for, Kunikida? Oh, is that really you, Kunikida?”

“Don’t give me that ‘Is that really you’ business. You knew it was me, and you kept on going anyway, didn’t you? The Agency is in a state of emergency, and you’re out here having a cute little date. And to make matters worse, your partner here is the case’s victim.”

“Are you jealous?”

“I am not jealous!”

I was absolutely, positively, 100% not in any way jealous.

“How mean. Someone tried to kill her; don’t you think she’s traumatized? I’m guarding her and helping her recover. Is that not a crucial and pressing matter for the Agency? Besides, from my personal experience, a woman who suffers a terrible experience can lose her open-mindedness, kindness, and laughter.”

“That last sentence ruined your entire excuse, you fool.”… But, I thought to myself, I should make a note of that. “Still, can you really run all over town and be frivolity incarnate? A girl this beautiful surely has a boyfriend already.”

“Oh, you would think that, Kunikida. If you had only asked her, you would have known that here she is, lacking even a single friend or relative to her name. She’s only ever had one boyfriend, and they broke up only a bit ago.”

I had heard she had no one to rely on at this time, but no more than that.

“So, Kunikida, you’ve got a chance,” Dazai said with an impish grin and a poking finger in my side.

“What are you talking about?” I pulled a face to show I didn’t have the faintest idea what he meant. “All right, that’s enough of that, Dazai. I came here to explain what’s happening since you decided to ditch the meeting this morning. If you skip out again, then so help me, the day you finally kill yourself, you’ll be dealt with so quickly that Hell will practically spit you back out.”

“Ooh, what a vulgar thought…” Dazai whined.

Satisfied with his reaction, I placed my documents on the table.

“This is the latest information. The military police heard the driver’s testimony during confession. He confessed to preparing the gas to prevent the trapped victims’ escape. But his testimony ends there. He claims to have no memory of installing hidden surveillance cameras. I have a hard time believing he would lie this late in the game, so in other words-”

“- There are at least two people involved, yes? The kidnapper and the photographer. The former is the taxi driver, and as for the latter - do you suppose this is the Azure Apostle?”

“I believe so.”

“Excuse me,” Miss Sasaki piped up timidly. “Am I allowed to hear this? This is a secret investigation, after all… Outsiders should not be privy to this information.”

“Sasaki, you’re the case’s victim, hardly an outsider. Don’t worry about it. Otherwise the great stickler of rules himself wouldn’t start lecturing me in front of you.”

“I’m not especially strict about rules. I’m just like anyone else.”

“Oh? Why, I never knew you could deliver such good jokes. So, then how about it? Do we have any leads?”

“I’m just like anyone else, I tell you.”

“... Sorry. Yup, you’re perfectly normal. Keep lecturing.”

Why did he apologize?

“Then to continue, I looked into our driver’s history. From what I can tell, he never had any contact with any sort of criminal organization and was otherwise a very normal taxi driver. No criminal records or shady friends either. It’s hard to believe he planned the abductions and sold the bodies to an organ harvesting syndicate entirely on his own. There must be someone who touted the organ trade as a get-rich-quick scheme and started him on his way.”

“And is that the Azure Apostle? Then shouldn’t we ask the driver about that name?”

“I don’t think we can. The man’s out of our reach - we could tear our hair out trying to make him confess, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it since, unfortunately, he is strongly guarded. By the time it would take for us to go through the police and secure an interview with him, our time limit would have long since passed.”

Who in the world were they?

Telling the driver about the organ trade, installing surveillance footage in the abandoned hospital, planting a bomb somewhere, and then threatening the agency - just what were they trying to do?

Miss Sasaki suddenly spoke up. “Excuse me. If I may propose an idea… You were speaking of a person called the Azure Apostle… Wasn’t that the person in the Azure Flag Terrorist case?”

“Oh, that case?”

The Azure Flag Terrorist incident…

The very case in which Rokuzou’s father passed away.

I also had a flash of suspicion when I saw the word “azure”.

“But the guilty party in that case, the Azure King, was supposed to have died by his own bomb. The dead are no threat to the living.”

“Well said, Kunikida. So I take it you’re no longer afraid of ghosts?”

“Don’t you dare bring up ghosts again.”

“But… I heard that the explosion was so large they were unable to identify even a trace of his body. Perhaps he faked his own death and ran into hiding…”

I had considered that as well and broached the subject to the military police. But the answer was no.

“According to the analysis the police performed at ground zero, there is no doubt that the Azure King died in the blast. Their methods of analysis are sound. Besides, one of their fellow policemen died in the line of duty at that very spot, so I can’t think they would make a mistake or overlook anything.”

“But…”

“Why, I may not know much about the Azure King,” Dazai piped up, “but does he seem the sort of person to crawl up from the depths of Hell to exact his revenge on the Agency?”

How lazy this man was. He couldn’t even take the time to do his own research. I had to explain everything.

The Azure King was responsible for the so-called Azure Flag Terrorist incident in which he attacked and destroyed several government facilities. The sheer scope and influence of his actions as a single domestic terrorist led to his infamy in the public eye.

Before he let his azure flag fly, the Azure King was, by all accounts, no more than an upstanding bureaucrat.

After graduating at the top of his class from a prestigious institution and studying at university overseas, he harbored the lofty ambitions of living his life as a citizen in the world of the government and the law, as was quite a reasonable expectation for this young man. Therefore it was unclear how leading a political purge through such destruction contributed towards his goal.

One day, the national broadcasting station received a piece of footage. It was a confession to a crime made by a young man who concealed his face with a flag dyed azure blue. In the video, the man introduced himself as the Azure King, said that he weeped for this imperfect world, and claimed that only the imperfections could make amends for themselves.

“No matter what we aspire to, our neighbors fall ill, our parents die, and only a fraction of the wicked are ever condemned. If this is the result of our aspirations, then let us aspire to an ideal world. Let us aspire to it not with the noble hands of God, but with our own imperfect, blood-stained hands.”

His beautiful words came simultaneously with a tripartite attack on government facilities: arson at a city police building, a rear-end collision in commuting traffic, and a bomb at the military police station. The casualties were a murderer of eight who was found innocent due to lack of documentation, a member of the ruling party in the Diet who embezzled money from the budget to supply refugee aid in developing countries, and a troop of military police who was revealed to be responsible for the assault (and subsequent murder) of a young member of a separate police force. Every one of them died in the attack.

The Azure King passed judgment and sentence both with his actions on those the law could not condemn.

This blitzkrieg tactic shocked the world. Multiple high-security government institutions were simultaneously destroyed. No one even imagined an attack of this scale possible.

After that, the Azure King’s crimes (or his convictions, if you prefered) continued.

The military and government officials who completely lost face in the process promptly began a nation-wide search for him. Even the Agency was called in to help.

I had already explained everything after that point: finding the safe house, the infiltration, and the suicide bombing. The situation was resolved on the backs of piled corpses.

“But still, supposing the Azure King were the criminal here, it is unclear as to why he should want to ruin our reputation.”

“Couldn’t he hold a grudge against you, Kunikida?”

The Azure King, holding a grudge against me?

True, it was I who obtained the information about his hiding point. I was the one who delivered said information to the city police which orchestrated his arrest. But - no, it couldn’t be.

The evil domestic terrorist, the Azure King, as a ghost?

If death only furthered his deep resentment towards the Agency and myself, then if he were to take revenge-

“At any rate, we should keep our guards up until we know who we’re up against. We don’t know who or what they’re after. We’d better hide Sasaki somewhere safe too.”

“How about the Agency building? But it is unoccupied at night. Where-”

Suddenly, I realized Dazai’s crafty plot.

“Are you trying to say you should shelter this young woman in your room for the sake of her protection? You fiend, carrying on this lascivious, indecent, salubrious relationship at all hours of the day and night! Are you a cur? This is entirely disgraceful; if you were I, I should think I’d show a little more restraint-”

“Hold on, Kunikida. There’s nothing going on between Sasaki and I…”

“Huh?”

“I keep telling you. The first night she stayed with me, I slept in another room, and I haven’t so much as touched a hair on her head since. And no matter how you look at it, wouldn’t it be downright ridiculous for me to seduce this poor woman on the very day she was nearly killed? Even you, oh stubborn one, should be able to see that.”

Oh… was this true? My god, how quick I had been to jump to conclusions.

“Well, to be honest, I knew you had the completely wrong idea, but it was funny for me to watch, so I let you keep thinking that.”

That little…

But for such a pure and upstanding citizen such as myself to have made such a gauche mistake, someone might very well say, “What, suspicious of a single night in the same house? Kunikida must be some sort of a closet pervert,” and ignore all sound reasoning. With no means to refute such an accusation, I would have been forced to die in agony. I supposed it was a blessing that such a thing did not come to pass.

… But I was suspicious. Was this not Dazai?

In any event, the fact that Dazai was not some idiot who made passes at every woman the moment he saw her was some comfort. It was difficult to maintain the proper sense of formality with a case victim.

“Don’t word things so ambiguously, then. But it’s all for the better if there really is nothing between you. From here on out, you should mind your familiarity with witnesses and treat them appropriately. That is what it means to be a professional.”

“... Yes, sir.” Dazai nodded earnestly and in the next breath turned to Miss Sasaki and asked, “By the way, what’s your type in men?”

“What just happened to ‘Yes, sir’?!”

I retracted my previous words. This man was a womanizer, through and through.

“My- my type…? I must say, how frightfully presumptuous of you to assume I have a type of man I seek out… but I think… I find men who are passionate about ideals and devote themselves to something… as extraordinarily wonderful.”

What was that just then?

“Aww, well, that’s too bad. That’s Kunikida to a T, isn’t it? What a shame, no hope for me. Damn, but you two should have a talk sometime. And while you do that, I’ll be over here counting my fingers.”

“H-hey, Dazai! Don’t leave the conversation!”

“I’m a little busy; I forgot what number I’m on.”

“Quit sulking! Enough is enough. Get back over here!”

Now that the two of us were alone, I couldn’t think of what to say!

“You see… I’m a normal woman, so being with me is no help to anyone striving towards his ideals. I’ve only had my heart broken for ideals, and the two of us expended fruitless effort and tired ourselves out… And then in the end, he chose ideals over me, and I was thrown away. That’s why I think I shall refrain from dating idealists from now on.”

Miss Sasaki smiled faintly. What had happened to her…?

“Boy, Kunikida, your expression sure is easy to read,” Dazai piped up.

“T-there’s nothing to read here! Look the other way, Dazai!”

“Ow!”

I twisted Dazai’s head around forcefully so he could mind his own damn business and not mine.

“First you tell me to stay, then you tell me to leave. Make up your mind, man. Let’s go back to the original conversation.”

… What had we been talking about?

“Ah yes, the topic of Miss Sasaki’s safety. For the time being, it’s not like we can write off the police’s help as an option…”

“Um… thank you for lodging me, and I truly do appreciate it, but it does seem to be causing a strain on you… So from now on, I can stay in a hotel room or some such place. You needn’t concern yourselves about me any longer.”

“We can’t do that. Hotels may say they’re safe, but this most recent case is like a bad omen of that. But I can’t imagine how long you could stay in Dazai’s room without him transforming into a perverted beast. Come stay with me.”

“Huh?”

“Huh?” Dazai echoed.

“No, I - I didn’t mean it like that- I don’t have any ulterior motives, I swear!”

“No, no matter how you look at it, this is riddled with ulterior motive. You don’t know when to give up, do you?”

“No! My intentions were entirely pure.”

Dazai chuckled. “What a lie. Sasaki, it’s absolutely true that you’ll be safe at Kunikida’s house. And don’t worry about him either - he doesn’t have the courage to make any further moves. He’s a man of eminent virtue who lives his life according to his ideals, you know. You see his notebook? His image of an ideal woman is really something else.”

Dazai passed Miss Sasaki my notebook. I patted my notebook in surprise. It was not there.

“Dazai! When did you steal that?!”

“Here, look at this page,” Dazai said, pointing with a finger.

“Oh my… are you sure I may?”

“Aren’t you curious?”

“Yes… Well, I’m sorry, but I won’t lie. I am a little bit interested now.”

Miss Sasaki began to read with an embarrassed giggle.

Her face turned pale by degrees as she read.

“Oh my…. I see. But then this…”

My image of an ideal woman.

Eight notebook pages, fifteen categories, fifty-eight items - enough to classify this as an enormous work.

“Oh… Ah, so in other words, that’s… well, I don’t know…”

Dazai’s words came to mind. “Please never, I mean ever, show this page to a woman. She will recoil from you.”

When Miss Sasaki finished reading, she looked up again, but no traces of her earlier laughter remained.

In its place was a chilly grin with all the life drained from it, as if she were a plaster statue.

“Mr. Kunikida.”

“Yes…?”

“This person does not exist.”

Someone bring me a drink, I thought.

The capital city of Tokyo lay situated at the heart of the country, a metropolis formed from a huge collection of economic and political facilities.

One of these facilities was a building in which all sorts of people passed in and out. A diverse blend of foreigners - some with dark skin, others, light - went about their work there.

This was the Embassy of the United States.

It was the largest foreign-owned territory in all of the country.

The line for general admission stretched so long that some waited well into the afternoon, but nevertheless, everyone in the queue waited their turn in silence. They stood as silently as if awaiting the moment of total judgment, unable to see any but themselves as they stared, fixedly, at something beyond the concept of waiting itself.

A monitor installed there broadcasted live coverage of a major league baseball game; presently, it showed a young white man almost listlessly criticizing the fan-favorite team for losing a run.

I glanced to my side at Dazai. He smiled away in apparently sincere enjoyment.

The operation will begin momentarily, so I might as well look forward to it, right? Dazai’s grin seemed to say.

It was not a laughing matter.

“Are you ready, Kunikida?”

“I already feel sick to my stomach. It’s all riding on you, so don’t slip up. If this goes wrong, we’ll be tried by international law.”

“International criminals… I like the sound of that. Okay, here I go!”

“Hey, wait!”

I made to stop Dazai with a surge of anxiety, but he had already walked off beyond my reach to the reception desk.

It is worth noting at this point that Dazai was garbed in a ratty, patch-riddled under robe while I wore a fine navy blue suit and a necktie.

He went up to the embassy employee working the reception, popped open his mouth, and practically yelled, “Hey, why am I still waiting? Come on! I’ve been here for six hours already!”

Nearby heads swiveled to stare at him. The receptionist, a Japanese woman, blinked in astonishment.

“Come on already, man! I can’t take it anymore! What’s the deal? You keep sending in all those bigwigs before me!”

Dazai continued to wail at the receptionist, flapping his arms and legs and generally making a scene. A mature adult would have coughed up blood if they were caught using this pathetic strategy. I myself would have rathered to take poison and die than to stoop to this level.

“Beg pardon, but what business do you have here?” The poor receptionist asked as Dazai continued to throw his tantrum. It was a commendable attempt, but her opponent was ruthless.

“I literally just said it! Come on, weren’t you listening? I’m defecting! De-fec-ting! I want only from the bottom of my heart to run away to your honorable land of America! But you keep me waiting and wasting my time here! Are you saying I can’t go? Is that it? You’re only a clerk, miss, and overstepping your legal authority is a serious crime!”

“You there! What’s the meaning of all this? Causing a disturbance in the embassy is a serious crime too!”

Naturally, a security guard heard the commotion and came charging over to Dazai.

Now it was my turn.

“Hold on. I happen to be the companion of this loud young man. May I ask if you really have the authority to arrest him?” I stepped in front of the charging guard and blocked his way.

“Article 31, Section 2 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations! ‘The authorities of the receiving state shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post.’ This man is an honored guest of the embassy until he is recognized as obstructing the work of the consular post. If you disrupt his complaining without appropriate authorization, we will have an international incident on our hands.”

My sharp rebuke gave him pause.

Of course, he likely knew the gist of the Vienna Convention as well, but it was only human nature to back off when faced with the threat of an “international incident”.

“I’m deserting, I tell you! I want to speak to your manager!”

As if in celebration of his luck in being an unstoppable force, Dazai fell to the floor in front of the reception desk and carried on his tantrum there. It was all according to our plan, but nevertheless, I had to suppress the absurd urge to throttle him.

Now, just how was it that two fine members of the Armed Detective Agency were reduced to carrying out a high-stakes diplomatic mission in the American embassy with a method that better suited a five-year-old whining for a toy?

“The bomber is a foreigner?” I asked. We sat in the same coffee shop in the shopping district.

“Yes, and likely a professional at that,” Dazai said, sipping his coffee.

This was immediately following a message we received from one of Miss Sasaki’s colleagues.

“My major in college is criminal psychology, you see. I may have information that may be some kind of help to you,” she said.

The message said that Miss Sasaki was a world-known researcher of criminal psychology. She had been presented with no small number of awards at famous academic conferences and was a talented young associate professor. Thus she had conducted her own investigations into previous similar cases from her colleagues’ files for us.

“There don’t seem to be any cases among my fellow criminal psychologists records of previous cases that detail an explosion with over one hundred casualties within Japan itself. … Of course, this is ignoring the bombings of the World Wars.”

“What about international cases?”

“Yes. … There are many international cases related to political conflicts or ideological struggles. But there are precious few details, even about the types of bombs or their manufacturers…. My apologies.”

“No, this is good information,” said Dazai. “In other words, this Azure Apostle, being as they created this bomb, should know about the makeup and composition of the bombs in those cases. Now that’s the first step to building a criminal profile for them, isn’t it?”

“I disagree. We’re still no closer to finding either the bomb or the Apostle. Do you really think this is good enough?” I asked.

At the very least, we needed the criminal’s name and face. We had no way of investigating otherwise.

Dazai tapped his thumb to his lips, apparently lost in thought. “This criminal is in disguise… we’ll never find them,” he murmured. “I suppose… I have no other choice.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Hey, Kunikida, the threat letter plainly said they ‘manufactured’ the bomb, correct? But it’s not a simple thing to manufacture a bomb capable of killing over a hundred people.”

“It would indeed be a difficult task for the layman, but an expert would find it simple enough.”

I had acquired some knowledge of dangerous chemical substances from my studies in sciences and mathematics and my experience at the Agency.

The chemicals necessary to build a bomb require extreme caution and care in regulating their conditions such as temperature. Even the slightest deviation from the process can result in an explosion. However, the ingredients themselves are commonplace; even a grade-school science classroom keeps them in large quantities. Hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, nitrogenous fertilizer, and aluminum are all legal and inexpensive to acquire. The trouble in bomb manufacturing arises from the exact ratio of ingredients and the manufacturing process itself, not to mention the process of transporting and detonating the completed bomb.

“On the one hand, there are several recipes through which a professional can build a bomb on their own, but I have also heard of commercially made brands available for purchase-”

“That must be it. It can’t be as simple as all that to create this ‘twin to a bomb from a certain case’.”

“So… you’re trying to say… that the same person created the bomb for this case and the aforementioned case…?”

“Not only that. Didn’t you think the letter’s description of the explosion was unusually graphic and realistic?”

I thought back to the letter. “There will be an unquenchable flame as bright as if the sun had fallen to Earth. Nearby buildings will crumble to their foundations; people will attempt to flee while on fire. The roads will melt, and fragments of exploded cars will lodge in the ruins of blazing buildings.”

“Yes,” Dazai agreed, “I thought the letter writer surely must have witnessed such a scene themselves.”

“What?”

“Sasaki, do you have any news footage of international explosions of this caliber?”

“No… not as far as I can tell. I don’t believe anyone caught up in an explosion of this size would be recording the event.”

“As is to be expected. But the letter described the scene as clearly as if the author first-hand witnessed a city after an explosion. And witnessed only a few minutes after the explosion, I might add. I can’t help but wonder if this person returned to ground zero after planting the bomb and running. That would have enabled them to see this scene.”

“You’re saying… you think the Azure Apostle was behind the previous case as well?”

If that were the case, that would certainly have wrapped up our criminal profile nicely - a professional bomb builder, responsible for a bomb explosion overseas, now infiltrating Japan. But-

“No,” I said. “It won’t work.”

“Why’s that?”

“You wouldn’t know since you were busy ditching the meeting, but through our connections with the Public Security Bureau and the military police, we already had a local bomb manufacturing expert look into this. They turned up no suspects. There are no terrorists in Japan who have the skill to create a bomb capable of causing over a hundred casualties who are not already being monitored. With that being said, we can hardly go around questioning every foreigner in the country one-by-one.”

Dazai cackled at that.

“What’s that evil laughter for?”

“There are lists that even famous detective agencies with assistance from the military police aren’t allowed to go snooping about into. That’s information from foreign secret intelligence agencies. I’m sure they’ve sniffed out the suspect from that case.”

“Foreign secret intelligence, you say?”

Foreign secret intelligence agencies are organizations such as America’s CIA and NSA. The United Kingdom’s MI6 is another famous example. Every nation has some such organization which operates in secret in order to protect the well being of their country. But that being said-

“There is no way a foreign secret service would hand over their secrets to a Japanese private enterprise with a ‘by your leave’. And do you even have any connections with the secret service in the first place?”

“I don’t.”

“Well, there you go.”

“But I know somewhere we can go to meet one.”

I had a very bad feeling about this.

That was how we ended up on our espionage mission in the American embassy.

Dazai’s plan was simple: Raise trouble at the embassy.

If all went well, there was a good chance we would be directed to someone higher up in order to smooth everything over. We would then negotiate with said higher up. A foreign secret service agent would view their own embassy as a place of peace. The ambassador would be sure to have connections to them.

Certainly, all this was an absurd and excessively overbearing measure.

However, I had to admit that Dazai’s plan was a spark of hope for me, as I would have otherwise found myself trapped in a dead end.

Dazai occasionally let me catch glimpses of his quick thinking and discerning eye as we worked together. He was complex, a pool so deep I could not see its bottom. I couldn’t help but gather the impression that something else hid behind his eccentric behavior - something chilly, an almost demonic intellect.

I couldn’t picture him as a simple vagabond with no previous achievements. He side-stepped every personal question I tossed his way; was he hiding a dark and shifty past? Perhaps something criminal -

“Hey, just let me out already, lady! Hey, hey, look at me when I’m talking! Are you even listening to me? Quit looking away! Yeah, my eyes are up here, lady! Come on, give me some eye contact!”

No. Never mind. He was just an idiot.

“Um, excuse me, you need to fill out this form to then wait your turn…”

“I already filled that out ages ago!” Dazai wailed. This was a lie, of course. “I literally filled out every line every single itty-bitty line with my favorite pen, and nothing happened, so I wanted to talk to someone, you get me?”

He pulled a black fountain pen out of his breast pocket to show her.

“My favorite pen is the same type as once used by a Middle Eastern dictator. Cool, huh? You can look at it if you want. Look, it’s really big and heavy, so it’s super hard to write with. I’m going to get pissed if you keep making me fill out those tiny forms with this. Didn’t think about that one, huh?”

You’re the greatest evil who has ever used that pen, I thought, but I said nothing.

“Hey, lady, I’m kind of a writer. You ever read anything of mine? How about I make you the main character in my next book? All you gotta do is let me talk to your boss. It’s gonna be a story about you and me committing a lover’s suicide. I swear I’ll write it with this very pen once I’ve deserted.”

Dazai was oddly at home in the role of a bad author. I had a hunch he often acted like this to pick up women at bars.

“Hey, you seriously gotta do something, or I’m gonna be screwed; these scary Public Security dudes are gonna kill me! It’s ‘cause I write whatever I want. Can you believe it? What, all a man’s gotta do is write that some big hotshot in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wears a wig, and now the authorities are after him? That’s a violation of my freedom of speech! The tyranny of the government will not stand! And fake hair will not stand either!”

“Hey, shut up, dude! I can’t hear the game! And what the hell’s wrong with a wig?” A young Caucasian man in a black cap shouted from his seat in the waiting room.

But this booing wouldn’t deter Dazai.

“What’s your problem, man? He shouldn’t have been mad about me revealing his wig! If he was going to be that mad about it, he should have let the elements shine on his head from the start!”

“Sir, excuse me, your companion-” the confused clerk said, shifting her attention to me in a plea for help. I mentally apologized to her, but lives were at stake here.

The drained, half-dazed clerk sighed and staggered out of her chair with a nod. “Please… please wait a moment.”

I thought that no one of any higher power than her would have wanted to deal with Dazai either. I entirely understand the feeling. I felt sympathetic towards them.

Our wait was short. When the clerk returned, she ushered Dazai and I into another room with a “This way, please.”

“Your little stunt has troubled us greatly.”

After we were led into a separate reception room designed for diplomatic talks, we found a bald, Caucasian waiting for us. The business card he proffered to us named him the Third Attaché. Not a bad catch, I thought.

However, it still wasn’t enough. He did not have the clearance to know confidential secret intelligence. This is where the real game began.

“I understand your position,” I said, bowing my head. Knowing that his culture did not place an importance on bowing as ours did, I judged my action might bewilder him and put him off ease. “Political refugees from this peaceful country are all but unheard of. You would surely hear the same if you corroborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well. It is therefore-”

“Oh, enough of that already. Yeah, sorry about all that, pops, but we needed to be seen separately. The truth is, I’m not actually an author.”

I pulled an ID card out of my breast pocket. It was made of black cloth and bordered in golden letters.

“We are members of the Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau.”

“The… the PSB?” the attaché squeaked, and no wonder. If your receiving country’s security police showed up on your doorstep, something had gone terribly wrong.

“Circumstances exist such that we were unable to contact you in the normal way. However, we are indeed the police; please feel free to verify our identification.”

I displayed the card to him. The gold writing named me a police officer next to a photograph bearing the same claim.

The attaché took my card and compared me to the photo.

Of course, the ID was fake. I had created it identical to a real officer’s ID with my Ability. Therefore, the attaché could not spot the lie from it.

Now our acting would have to be just as fool proof.

“Due to unavoidable circumstances, it is absolutely necessary we receive secret access to American security information. I am asking for information from American secret service agencies regarding expert bomb manufacturers located in our country. This is a security matter of utmost importance to us, so I ask for your quick cooperation.” I blurted out my pre-memorized speech in a single breath.

“This… this is absurd.”

“I agree; it is.” I continued to press him. “If you do not have access to this knowledge, please forward us along to someone who does.”

“The embassy does indeed have frequent dealings with secret service agents… but I can’t authorize it as simply as all that.”

“We don’t have a moment to waste arguing. This is a critical moment for us. Hundreds of people could lose their lives.”

The attaché's face paled when he heard the words “hundreds of people”. What a kind-hearted fellow.

“P-please give me a moment.” He wiped his brow of sweat, looking dreadfully frightened, and called someone on the room’s telephone. After a whispered argument with the person on the other end, he hung up the phone and turned to face us.

“My, what good news. I am not able to fulfill your original request, but…” he said, smiling.

Relieved by the apparent progress, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you very much.”

“I spoke to the minister’s secretary just now, and by a stroke of luck, it appears that my superiors are currently at lunch with the Chief of the Public Security Bureau. We would be happy to negotiate if that request were to come from him. My, but how lucky we are.”

“... What?”

“Your police chief will be here shortly. Please make yourself comfortable until he arrives.” Still wiping his sweating brow, the attaché reassuringly beamed at us.

…This was bad.

This was very bad.

The Chief of the Public Security Bureau held the bureau’s top position as its superintendent general. But top position or no, they likely knew next to nothing about this bomb scandal threat. Even if they did, they most certainly did not know of us or our attempts to take information from foreign secret intelligence agencies.

And that was to say nothing of us ordinary citizens attempting to pass as PSB officers.

“Ah, well, Mr. Attaché. Excuse me, but… that would not work for us.”

“What? Oh, no, no, you have no need to worry. Even the secret service boys can’t possibly refuse the Chief of Police. Don’t worry about a thing.”

What could I do? Everything would be ruined if the Chief of Police showed up.

“That really won’t do for us. That is because… well, I’m trying to say. Um.”

“I am this man’s editor. I sympathize with your pain, but as you can see, he won’t listen to a thing you say. I’m sorry, but will you please deliver a message for me? I believe he will give up once an official of power delivers their verdict.”

The drained, half-dazed clerk sighed and staggered out of her chair with a nod. “Please… please wait a moment.”

I thought that no one of any higher power than her would have wanted to deal with Dazai either. I entirely understand the feeling. I felt sympathetic towards them.

Our wait was short. When the clerk returned, she ushered Dazai and I into another room with a “This way, please.”

“Your little stunt has troubled us greatly.”

After we were led into a separate reception room designed for diplomatic talks, we found a bald, Caucasian man waiting for us. The business card he proffered to us named him the Third Attaché. Not a bad catch, I thought.

However, it still wasn’t enough. He did not have the clearance to know confidential secret intelligence. This is where the real game began.

“I understand your position,” I said, bowing my head. Knowing that his culture did not place an importance on bowing as ours did, I judged my action might bewilder him and put him off ease. “Political refugees from this peaceful country are all but unheard of. You would surely hear the same if you corroborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well. It is therefore-”

“Oh, enough of that already. Yeah, sorry about all that, pops, but we needed to be seen separately. The truth is, I’m not actually an author.”

I pulled an ID card out of my breast pocket. It was made of black cloth and bordered in golden letters.

“We are members of the Metropolitan Police Department Public Security Bureau.”

“The… the PSB?” the attaché squeaked, and no wonder. If your receiving country’s security police showed up on your doorstep, something had gone terribly wrong.

“Circumstances exist such that we were unable to contact you in the normal way. However, we are indeed the police; please feel free to verify our identification.”

I displayed the card to him. The gold writing named me a police officer next to a photograph bearing the same claim.

The attaché took my card and compared me to the photo.

Of course, the ID was fake. I had created it identical to a real officer’s ID with my Ability. Therefore, the attaché could not spot the lie from it.

Now our acting would have to be just as fool proof.

“Due to unavoidable circumstances, it is absolutely necessary we receive secret access to American security information. I am asking for information from American secret service agencies regarding expert bomb manufacturers located in our country. This is a security matter of utmost importance to us, so I ask for your quick cooperation.” I blurted out my pre-memorized speech in a single breath.

“This… this is absurd.”

“I agree; it is.” I continued to press him. “If you do not have access to this knowledge, please forward us along to someone who does.”

“The embassy does indeed have frequent dealings with secret service agents… but I can’t authorize it as simply as all that.”

“We don’t have a moment to waste arguing. This is a critical moment for us. Hundreds of people could lose their lives.”

The attaché's face paled when he heard the words “hundreds of people”. What a kind-hearted fellow.

“P-please give me a moment.” He wiped his brow of sweat, looking dreadfully frightened, and called someone on the room’s telephone. After a whispered argument with the person on the other end, he hung up the phone and turned to face us.

“My, what good news. I am not able to fulfill your original request, but…” he said, smiling.

Relieved by the apparent progress, I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you very much.”

“I spoke to the minister’s secretary just now, and by a stroke of luck, it appears that my superiors are currently at lunch with the Chief of the Public Security Bureau. We would be happy to negotiate if that request were to come from him. My, but how lucky we are.”

“... What?”

“Your police chief will be here shortly. Please make yourself comfortable until he arrives.” Still wiping his sweating brow, the attaché reassuringly beamed at us.

…This was bad.

This was very bad.

The Chief of the Public Security Bureau held the bureau’s top position as its superintendent general. But top position or no, they likely knew next to nothing about this bomb scandal threat. Even if they did, they most certainly did not know of us or our attempts to take information from foreign secret intelligence agencies.

And that was to say nothing of us ordinary citizens attempting to pass as PSB officers.

“Ah, well, Mr. Attaché. Excuse me, but… that would not work for us.”

“What? Oh, no, no, you have no need to worry. Even the secret service boys can’t possibly refuse the Chief of Police. Don’t worry about a thing.”

What could I do? Everything would be ruined if the Chief of Police showed up.

“That really won’t do for us. That is because… well, I’m trying to say. Um.”

The attaché stared at me in bewilderment.

“The chief can’t come due to… certain circumstances.”

“Oh, really? And what would those circumstances be?”

It was no use. This ad libbed excuse really would not cut it.

“The chief is… incredibly busy. He has much to do today.”

“Yes, of course he must be. But they said on the phone that it would be no trouble for him to come today.”

“Yes, they may have said that, but that is not what they meant.  Despite what they say, he has… you know, this and that going on.”

“Huh…?”

“All sorts of things, like… he accidentally spent too long catching up with an old friend, and he needs to go buy his dog more food, and… he needs to turn in papers at the town hall.”

“Is he a housewife?” the puzzled attaché asked, tilting his head. Oh lord, even I didn’t know what I was saying.

“At- at any rate, the chief mustn't know about this issue.”

“He mustn’t know…? Do you mean to say that you are doing this without your superiors’ knowledge?”

“Not exactly… well, no, we did come in secret.”

“Why, that’s terrible. Why is that?”

“It was an accident.”

“An accident?” he squawked.

“Yes, it was an accident. Well, you see, it is a bit of an emergency, so we accidentally forgot to tell them. So when it comes right down to it, I mean, it’s a bit of an emergency… and we accidentally forgot to tell them.”

“Why are you repeating yourself?”

“I- I can’t say anything else for reasons of confidentiality. Anyway, please contact your secret service agent!”

Who knew what would happen if I kept babbling?

“This is absurd. Your purpose for the agent is confidential as well. And your explanation is… well…”

“My goodness… I suppose we have no other choice.” Dazai bent forward, sighing in disappointment. “My good sir. Let me explain in place of my tongue-tied fool of an assistant. I’m afraid we really have no choice but to keep this as a secret from the chief. We have reason to believe the bomber has planted a spy somewhere within the PSB, particularly at the chief’s side.

“What? How can this be?”

“This is why we are depending on your cooperation to keep it a secret. We are working with an inner-division inspector to pinpoint the perpetrator and the spy within the PSB. If the chief comes here today and the spy catches wind of their blown cover, we stand in danger of the bomb detonating. We must locate the bomb before that can happen.”

The attaché paled as he listened to Dazai’s speech.

“That is… indeed an issue of grave concern. But why did you not inform me of this earlier?” His eyes flicked to me as he spoke.

“He could not tell you for fear of disclosing the entire incident. The man is a poor liar, but that, too, is for secrecy and non-disclosure. If you were in our shoes, would you take your concern of a spy among your own superiors to the Japanese police?”

The attaché mumbled, “Perhaps not…”

“We have narrowed down our list of suspects to include only those capable of manufacturing a horrible bomb of that caliber. We know the criminal has already committed a great act of international terrorism. This is an investigation critical to worldwide security, even the safety of America itself. We wish to cooperate with your nation’s secret intelligence agencies in order to eradicate the anti-government factions within our own police force. Would you be so kind as to assist us?”

“I understand. You have my full support.”

Dazai… you’re incredible, I thought.

The attaché rose to his feet in a hurry and ushered us along with a, “Let me show you to him. This way please.”

He led us to a private office room in the embassy’s basement.

He said, “Please wait a moment,” with a nervous expression and hurried out, leaving us behind.

We recognized the young man who finally entered the room to receive us.

“I wish you would quit bullying our attaché. He’s a good man. And, if I may add, an ordinary good man.”

“You were… you were watching baseball in the waiting room…. Are you the American secret service agent?”

It was the Caucasian man in the black cap. Yes, this was the one who had lounged around in apparent boredom earlier.

“My ID says I’m the janitor,” he said while grabbing and showing us the name tag on his chest. “So? What are you doing poking around here? Shouldn’t you be investigating a bomb threat, Armed Detective Agency?”

Dazai and I exchanged glances.

“You knew?”

“It’s my job to keep on top of issues that arise here in Japan. That’s to say nothing of the fact that news of an ability organization running around like headless chickens all morning has already reached the other side of the globe. I’ve been monitoring you ever since the moment you stepped foot inside the embassy.”

So they really say that outside of the books and movies, I marveled.

“We’re looking for a person threatening to detonate a bomb within the city,” I said. “This person once used a similar bomb overseas.” Don’t you have records to this effect? According to the criminal, this is a bomb capable of killing over a hundred people with ‘an unquenchable white flame as bright as the fallen Sun’-”

“Yeah… It’s gotta be him,” the secret service man said with a shake of the head.

“Do you know who this is?”

“An unquenchable flame and a white light means it’s Alamta’s aluminum powder mix. Here’s his file.”

He removed a stack of papers from a cabinet.

“Zadkiel Alamta. He’s of Japanese descent. Used to do business making bombs for terrorist groups in the Middle East. We’ve been keeping tabs on him ever since he came to Japan a year ago.”

“And you didn’t notify the PSB?” I asked as I perused the files.

“We had our reasons. We wanted to catch him ourselves. He was setting off his own bombs and selling them to other terrorist groups as well. If we got a hold of his list of customers, we’d be able to round up an entire crew of anti-American advocates.”

I flipped over a page. On its reverse was a photograph of Alamta’s face and details of his previous bombs.

“What an evil device,” I snarled through gritted teeth. “If this detonated in Yokohama, the death toll would not end at one hundred people.”

The file said that Alamta’s method was to mix together a slurry bomb from aluminium powder and plant it inside of a car. He then would load the car with several hundred kilos of blast powder and remotely detonate it with a wireless device. Ammonium nitrate served as his main ingredient while armor piercing blasting powder served as an aid. It is possible, the file continued, to refine large quantities of both ingredients cheaply.

Alamta uses aluminum powder in order to ensure total casualties for all nearby persons. Aluminium powder facilitates combustion, which means the fires burn strongly while emitting a great white light. At the same time, it also disperses on the shockwave at temperatures reaching 600oC which cooks to death the body of anyone it passes through. To top it all off, aluminum is a kind of metal that combusts in water to form hydrogen gas. In other words, efforts to put out the flames with water would only spread them further.

“An unquenchable flame and as bright as the fallen Sun” indeed. This bomb was the work of a devil.

If such a bomb were to go off in the densely populated downtown areas, then the death toll (including that from subsequent blackouts or accidents) could easily surpass a thousand. Furthermore, a bomb carried via an automobile could easily slip past police surveillance.

We could not let it be detonated within Yokohama.

I asked, “Where is Alamta now?”

“He gave my colleagues the slip two days ago, and we don’t know where he is now. He could be anywhere at this point.”

Shit, so in order to find the bomb, we needed to look for Alamta first.

But still, even learning his name and background was progress. It was highly probable that this Alamta was our Azure Messenger.

It was still unclear as to why Alamta was threatening the Agency. Perhaps he resented us because one of the cases we resolved led to a clue towards his arrest.

“So? What is the cost of this information, sir?” Dazai asked with a small grin.

“Nothing. I can hardly turn a blind eye to the deaths of hundreds of Japanese civilians. I gladly give you this information for the sake of justice.”

“I don’t buy it. Or at any rate, my sourpuss of a companion doesn’t buy it,” Dazai smirked. He had a good point. An American secret service agent’s duty was to American safety and prosperity only.

The agent spent a few moments in contemplation and then spoke. “Don’t turn him over to the PSB if you nab him. Give him to us instead. I want him to cough up every detail for the people he’s worked for.”

“You don’t want the police to take him under custody? Is that correct?” I frowned. “If he is the one responsible for this case, shouldn’t Japanese forces interrogate him as well?”

“That’s not it, Kunikida,” Dazai said. “They’re not going to interrogate him. They’re going to torture him for information. You know, that sort of thing which is illegal by international law. They can’t do that if they cooperate with the police. That’s why they want him detained off the record.”

I stared in silence at the agent in front of me. He stared back, expressionless, and made no comment. Was he not about to refute Dazai’s claim?

Immoral criminals weren’t the only lawbreakers in this world. But an ordinary citizen like me could never change the mind of a foreign secret service agency with a simple lecture.

“This is an unofficial meeting. You didn’t give any information to anyone. Therefore, we are under no obligation to repay you. Come, Dazai, we’re leaving.”

I walked to the door.

“Identify yourselves at the reception desk as ‘Fenimore Transportation’ the next time you come in. They’ll come get in touch with me,” the agent called. “It was quite impressive watching you land yourselves a clue. If that Agency gig doesn’t work out, give me a call. I’d like to scout you for a job in the secret service.”

“My, my. What do you think about that, Kunikida?” Dazai teased.

“They aren’t going to hire you for a position where you don’t so much as lift a finger when you hear of a bomb.”

I left the room without waiting for a response. The agent didn’t deign to give me one.

Dazai and I returned to the Agency to process our new information.

There were approximately two hours left until our sundown deadline.

We needed to find Alamta and make him cough up the location of this bomb - and all within two hours.

However, we did have good news. The Agency informed us we were saved.

The moment I heard the news, I was convinced we would be able to stop the bomb in time.

“Ah ha ha, you’re all hopeless! You really can’t handle a single case without me!”

I heard the familiar raucous laughter the moment I stepped into the office.

“Ranpo! What about the Kyuushuu case?”

“It wasn’t even a case. I only needed one look at the corpse to know the culprit, so I solved it and came home in a jiffy.

He sipped a glass of water while answering as if he had no other care in the world. Yes, this carefree man was none other than the senior detective Ranpo Edogawa.

“I heard all about you, Kunikida. All this running in circles for one little bomb, huh? Come on now, do I have to hold your hand and walk you through everything? It’s all your fault that I had to come home without doing any sightseeing in Kyuushuu first. I wanted to try a hot spring egg!”

“I apologize. However, your help is crucial.”

“Mine, you say?”

“Yes… we have a case we are unable to crack on our own… I’m sorry, but I must ask you to help with your unrivaled talent, Ranpo.”

Ranpo looked me up and down and sighed deeply. “Geez! Well, if I must! Nah, don’t be sorry, Kunikida; it’s my fault for being too competent. My Super Deduction is the best in the world, so it’s no wonder you have to rely on it!”

He thumped my shoulder, roaring with laughter.

“I completely agree with everything you said.” I bowed deeply.

“K-Kunikida, are you all right?” Dazai fretted. “Are you faking this?”

Faking this? What was he talking about? Ranpo was right.

“Dazai, give him the files.”

“Oh, yes. Here you go. I’m Dazai, the new guy. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Oh yeah, I heard about you. Keep your eyes peeled for a case out there. I’ll solve it for you.”

As Ranpo took the file, something about Dazai suddenly caught his eye.

“Hey, rookie. Uh, Dazai, was it…? What’d you do before this job?”

“Pardon?”

Ranpo’s face was blank. He stared at Dazai as if looking for something.

“Not much once I finished with school. I mostly loafed around a lot.”

Ranpo continued to steer at him as if he said nothing. Finally, after a few seconds, he said, “Really? That’s fine, then. Okay, go work hard.” He began laying out the files on his desk as if nothing ever happened.

What was that?

“Hey, Dazai, what was that about?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. By the way, what sort of Ability does Ranpo have?”

Changing the topic to get away from explaining yourself, eh, Dazai? 

“His Ability is called Super Deduction. It’s incredible. With it he can see the truth of a case with a single glance.”

“Are you serious?!”

So it seemed even Dazai could be startled.

“I am. Ranpo has many devoted followers even in the highest ranks of the government and the police force who call on him when they have a tough case to crack. He’s the backbone of the Agency.”

“It’s hard to believe a claim like that right off the bat,” Dazai mumbled, looking only halfway convinced.

“Watch and learn.”

“Kunikida!” Ranpo barked. “You want me to find the bomb with Super Deduction, right?”

 “Yes. We have no time. The bomb is our top priority. We’ll defuse it as soon as you find it.”

“So I don’t need to track down this Alamta guy?”

“The bomb is more important than anything else.”

“Good!” He chuckled. “Sorry. Now that I’m here, your wild goose chase was all for nothing. Dazai, bring me those glasses.”

Ranpo put on the black glasses Dazai passed him. Those glasses were necessary to activate his Ability.

He narrowed his eyes.

All of creation was laid out before his eyes, and he became an oracle receiving the thoughts of a god.

“Super Deduction.”

He sat in silence for a while before putting down his glasses and mumbling, “I see.”

“Oh! Do you really?” Dazai cried from behind Ranpo. He released the breath he had held while apparently spellbound by Ranpo’s Ability.

Ranpo crooked a finger. I pulled an enormous map of Yokohama from a bookcase and spread it out over the desk.

A devil of a weapon capable of ending over one hundred lives and the professional who crafted it, the apostle of screaming and panic - what diabolic place were they stationed?

A train station, a large hospital, a school - perhaps even a skyscraper, the city hall, or a shopping mall. The awful possibilities crossed my mind one after the after.

“The bomb is-”

Ranpo’s finger descended on the map. I watched with bated breath.

“-here. At this fishing tackle shop.”

……. Huh?

A fishing tackle shop?

Was I mishearing something? Perhaps this was really some sort of top secret facility or a shop dealing in dangerous substances?

“... I see. Incredible,” Dazai murmured. “I see, I see it now! Ranpo, your Ability is the real deal! Yes, the bomb has to be at the tackle shop! Come on, Kunikida, let’s hurry!”

“Seeing something this awesome makes you excited, huh, rookie?”

“Yes! You’re incredible; there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re an exceptional detective! You’re the best. I’m so glad you’re here! Now, let’s go, Kunikida. What are you sitting around looking dumbfounded for? If we leave now, we’ll make it before sundown!”

“Hey… Dazai, wait-”

“I’ll explain on the way! Hurry! Chop chop!”

“Good luck!” Ranpo called.

Dazai dragged me by the sleeve out the door.

We drove off in one of the company cars towards the tackle shop. I drove so as to prevent Dazai turning the car into a murder machine.

“Now explain yourself, Dazai. What were you going on about back there?” I asked Dazai, currently sitting in the passenger seat.

“Of course I’ll explain, but surely you don’t doubt Ranpo’s deduction?”

“Well, no, since Ranpo is never wrong. The bomb will be at the tackle shop. But why did you believe that too?”

Ranpo’s Ability allowed him to perceive the truth. It had never failed us before. But my concern was with what convinced Dazai of that.

“It was obvious once I saw the map.”

I thought back to that map. There was nothing in the surrounding area but roads, business offices, and small shops. The damage would not have been small, but this was hardly brutal enough for a national bomb threat.

“Quit trying to test me. I have a great deal of other things on my mind right now. Tell me already.”

“I also thought, after looking over the files, that an international terrorist like Alamta must want to cause a large scale explosion. He also never uses the same place twice. Remember some of the other ones? A tourist’s five-star hotel, a military communications base, and the foundation of a high-rise building, just to name a few. He always picks locations which have the greatest possible effect on his target. And so what is he aiming for this time?”

“Don’t put on airs; spit it out already!”

“Alamta’s target is - the oil storage facility.”

The words hit me with all the force of a mighty hammer blow.

Yokohama’s oil combine!

Of course. How did I not notice it before?

Yokohama, as one of Japan’s most distinguished port cities, is the most prominent place for ship fuel transport in the country. A huge area of the bay coast is dedicated to the storage of oil and natural gas. This fuel sustains industry for the entire Kanto region, colossal quantities of which are carried in and stored here at all hours of the night and day.

To make matters even worse, the combine is surrounded by chemical processing plants for crude oil, iron, and steel, along with an oil refinery plant which altogether power much of Japan’s most notable industries.

I imagined an explosion occurring nearby and the storage tanks catching fire. It would certainly have spread to ignite the entire port area. It would have likely taken several days to put out and would have gone down in history as the worst industrial fire ever recorded. The chemical fires would have been a challenge to extinguish with water alone and would have caused long-term damage. There would also have been human casualties, and above all, the effects on the economy would have been nothing short of unfathomable.

“I see now. So you were impressed with Ranpo for this correct deduction?”

“No.”

Huh?

“I was amazed that Ranpo managed to discover such a novel idea of aiming for the oil combine without using an Ability.”

“Then how?”

Dazai chuckled. “What surprised me more than anything was that Super Deduction isn’t an Ability.”

What?

“What are you talking about? Don’t say such foolish things. How could he have possibly pulled that off without an Ability?”

“That’s why it’s so amazing, I tell you! To tell you the truth, I crept up behind him while he was making his deductions and touched his hair.”

“What?”

I remembered seeing Dazai standing behind Ranpo the entire time. But when did he-

“As you know, my Ability negates other Abilities when I touch their user. I only need to touch a single body part, and then they can no longer use their superhuman powers. So in other words-”

Ranpo’s Super Deduction really was no Ability?

“Then that was-”

“That was regular deduction. Just a single person instantaneously drawing a logical conclusion on the basis of observations and inference. He had a map of Yokohama, our Alamta file, and a knowledge of fires. He threw those all together and formed his conclusion in a blink of the eye. He’s like a legendary detective character in a novel - no, for the character’s book ends when the case is solved. Then I don’t think any fictional character could hold a candle to Ranpo’s powers of observation which let him find the bomb without going to the crime scene or meeting the suspect.”

That was just deduction, he said?

Not even an Ability or a supernatural phenomenon, but only the result of ordinary thought?

“Is that even possible? How does-”

“That’s why I was amazed. That would be commonplace for an Ability user. Impressive, to be sure, but nothing shocking. Yet Ranpo achieved that with the same reasoning anyone could use. Alamta evaded the American surveillance two days ago. That’s not enough time for him to have gained permission to enter the oil storage facility or disguise himself as one of the workers. The most simple thing would have been to rent a car with the cash he had on hand, load it with the bomb, and leave it in a parking lot close to the storage facility. If the bomb’s range of damage is limited to a two hundred meter radius, the only place close enough on the map of the harbor is-”

“The fishing tackle shop?”

“Correct. Besides the wind direction, the challenge of detecting the bomb there is his other main reason for planting it there. My, but what powers of observation to determine that with a moment’s look! And even Ranpo himself treats it as an Ability.  Really, what an incredible person. I should be as diligent.”

I finally understood Dazai’s admiration. Certainly, a level of divine talent is nothing out of the ordinary for an Ability. But Ranpo’s deductive powers were a different story. He didn’t have a mere ten or twenty cases under his belt at this point. And in each of those cases, all he needed was a single glance at the information in order to uncover the truth - and that was from pure deductive reasoning. Calling it miraculous didn’t even begin to do it justice; it was an unbelievable feat.

This ordinary man was more powerful than an Ability user. I couldn’t think of anyone else with such genius in the nation - no, in the entire world.

But that being said-

I glanced at Dazai in the passenger seat.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you surprised by someone else’s skill.”

“Oh, really? I’m often surprised. Once I went to pick up a clam with my chopsticks, and it was still alive. Now that scared the daylights out of m-”

“That’s not what I meant. You always seem like you can see everything there is to know about everyone.”

I had the feeling that while Dazai played dumb with his unique mannerisms, his actions were somehow a reflection of his philosophical view of the world.  I didn’t understand why, but there was always something artificial about Dazai’s emotions. Was this man hiding an ability to see anything and everything behind his wayward mannerisms?

“Well, I suppose it’s true that I know just about everything about you, Kunikida. I don’t think you can surprise me anymore. That’s because you’re far too simple and straightforward to ever think about yourself.”

“What was that?!”

“See, even that reaction was honest. There you go. And I can predict you’re going to be asking yourself in private later, ‘Am I really that simple?’ Once again, there you go.”

“You little-”

I wanted to retaliate somehow, but I had the awful suspicion he would respond with “Exactly as I predicted.”

“Well, in that case, I’ll make sure to shock you. My power will exceed your expectations.”

“I will look forward to that. How about if you actually shock me, I’ll take you drinking?”

“You said it, not me. Don’t forget now.”

“I won’t forget. After all, I don’t stand to lose anything either way. Look, there’s the tackle shop coming up.”

I slowed the car and parked it on a side road from which we could see the shop.

I stepped out of the car and faced the shop. Only one hour remained until sundown. If we didn’t run into trouble, I assumed we would make it in time.

“How do we find the right car?”

“It’s simple. We should look for a big minivan with tinted windows to hide whatever is inside.”

I cautiously walked to put a bit of distance between myself and the company car. We couldn’t discard the possibility that someone lay in wait to guard the bomb.

The tackle shop was closed for the day, so only a dozen or so cars were scattered through the parking lot. None of them were occupied. The entire parking lot lay bathed in shadow due to the slope of the western side of the lot.

When I turned my head, I saw the oil tanks towering immediately behind me and the ocean beyond them. The closest tank couldn’t have been more than 100 meters away. If the parking lot went up in flames from the explosion, the fires would easily reach it.

“Kunikida, look at that car.”

I looked where Dazai was pointing. It was a small commercial vehicle. Its license plate revealed it to be a rental car. Even from far away, I could tell it had tinted windows. Also, even though there appeared to be no one inside, the car’s tires betrayed that it carried several hundred kilos more than its neighbors.

I emblazoned the words “radio jammer” onto a notebook page, tore it off, and focused on it. The paper immediately transformed into a portable radio wave inhibitor.

“Dazai. Put this near that car, and be mindful of booby traps. I’m going to scope out the area.”

The jammer’s shape resembled that of a cellphone. However, this device interfered with radio waves and prevented nearby devices from receiving or transmitting signals. Its range had a radius of 500 meters. It would block the remote activation signal once it was near the bomb.

I lifted my handgun and began searching near the parking lot for the enemy.

As alert as I was for enemy interference, I saw no signs of an enemy ambush or any snipers. Instead, I discovered a surveillance camera hidden in the grass. It was a smaller, wireless version of the kind we found in the ruined hospital. This proved to me without a doubt that this was the bomb’s location.

I lifted my head when I heard sudden voices.

What was that?

A small crowd of people was forming across the road. Approximately ten people formed a loose circle around some object at the circle’s center. Their uneasy expressions gave me a horrible premonition.

I concealed my gun and approached the group. I pushed my way through the muttering throng and saw the object which attracted their attention.

My breathing stopped.

The object that lay before me shouldn’t have been possible.

It was Alamta’s corpse.

“The jammer’s in position, Kunikida. What’s next-” Dazai called over his shoulders, but he, too, fell silent once he saw the body.

How?

How could he be lying here dead?

I stepped up to the corpse and examined it. Livor mortis had not set in. The jaw had not locked post death. Body warmth still clung to it under the armpits. Clearly, he had died only just before we arrived.

Beyond that, the body had no obvious injuries. I could find nothing hinting at the cause of his death. Instead, a series of black numbers - “00”, scratched all over his body - stood out on his skin like flecks. What could those mean? Were they tattoos, or perhaps-

“Kunikida. The police bomb squad will be here soon. Let’s leave this up to the experts,” Dazai said, placing a hand on my shoulder.

I hesitated. “All right.”

I searched the body, but I only found a handful of small change and a counterfeit driver’s license, nothing useful to speak of.

Still puzzled, Dazai and I shouldered our way past the growing crowd of gawkers and put the crime scene behind us.

I thought about the situation as I drove.

Why did Alamta have to die? And who killed him?

“Kunikida, I know you’re thinking about something important, but please don’t forget to watch the road,” Dazai said from the passenger seat.

“I know,” I responded while gripping the steering wheel.

Let’s review the facts, I told myself.

On the surface, there were two cases: the case of the repeated disappearances of Yokohama tourists and the bomb threat. Their perpetrators were, respectively, the taxi cab driver and Alamta. That was where the obvious ended.

However, an ulterior motive lurked behind both of these cases, namely a targeted scandal at the Agency’s expense. At the moment of the Agency’s failure, images would be broadcasted to the entire world. I did not think the taxi driver (or Alamta, really) was involved in that. I believed someone else was pulling their strings from behind the curtain.

The name of this puppet master was the “Azure Apostle”.

The Apostle first controlled the taxi driver, followed by Alamta, and passed them off as the perpetrators responsible for their crimes. Thus the Apostle avoided dirtying their own hands while creating the illusion of those crimes being voluntarily committed as part of their attack on the Agency.

It was next to impossible for us to target this puppet master. They gave their proxy criminals next to no direction and let them carry out the crimes as they saw fit. Both the driver and the bomb maker used their own methods as best suited them. Perhaps they themselves were not even aware they were being controlled.

As long as we failed to thwart the puppet master, there was sure to be a third attack sooner or later. Yes, the Agency was able to throw a wrench in their plans this time around. But could we reach the Azure Apostle with so few clues?

And then there was my additional concern.

What crime could we actually charge the Apostle with?

The only crimes they themselves had committed were secret photography and delivering threats. They had committed no murders nor planted any bombs themselves. It would have been infeasible to construct a case around the Apostle coercing the other criminals to willingly murder or kidnap. Did I really expect them to leave any incriminating evidence lying around? However-

It was then that my cell phone rang. It was the President calling. I pulled over to stop on the shoulder and picked up the call.

“Kunikida? We received word from the police. The taxi driver is dead.”

What-?!

“But he’s airborne and under police supervision.”

“Correct. He suddenly began to exhibit pain during questioning and died without warning. The cause of death is unclear, but the numbers “00” appeared written on his skin in black. Return to the office at once. We must place this situation under scrutiny.”

He hung up. My mind was awash in a storm of question marks.

This completely severed our connection to the Azure Apostle. The person who told the driver about the black market organ trade was our only clue about the puppet master, but the trail now ran cold with the driver’s death.

It was as if the enemy knew our every move. They were always one step ahead of the investigation.

They murdered Alamta just before we arrived at the bait shop, and now the driver, our last clue, was gone as well.

Just who was our enemy? They had to be someone who knew everything about the Agency down to the last detail of our actions.

They had to be someone capable of meddling with the crime scenes and controlling the events from the shadows.

“You’re making a scary face, Kunikida. Are you okay?” Dazai asked, but I didn’t have it in me to respond.

How was the enemy obtaining this insider information? How were they staying ahead of the Agency?

My cellphone rang again, jolting me from my thoughts. It was from Rokuzou.

“Hey, Specs. You got a minute?”

“What is it?”

“It’s… about that job. I finished tracking down the guy who sent those emails.”

“What?!”

This was it. The person who sent those threatening emails and pointed us towards the kidnapping and bomb cases signed those emails as the Azure Apostle. Once we could pinpoint the sender, the case was closed.

“To cut right to the chase, both emails were sent from the same computer. It was pretty well protected, but hey, I got through somehow. So then-”

“Who are you talking to, Kunikida?” Dazai asked. I held my hand up to silence him.

“Keep going.”

“So y’know, it’s my job to track down this guy to the bitter end, but giving you the results was never in the job description. If you ask me about ‘em, we’re gonna have a real problem. Now if you really, really want to know-”

“Quit being full of yourself. Hurry up and tell me.”

“Fine, I’ll tell you. So the thing is-

“The emails were sent from the Agency. They came from the computer of that new guy, Dazai.”

--------------------- What did he just say?

My mind froze, entirely blank.

It was impossible. Was this some sort of trap? Dazai had been busy working with me the entire time. He had been on the investigation the entire time-

Someone who knew everything about the Agency down to the last detail of our actions.

Someone capable of meddling with the crime scenes and controlling the events from the shadows.

“I’ll call you back later,” I said and hung up.

“What was that for? Judging from your tone of voice, I bet that was Rokuzou, right?”

“Be quiet.”

My thoughts spun in circles.

Dazai. Osamu Dazai. The rookie Agency detective who popped up right out of the blue.

And this series of cases all began immediately after Dazai appeared in our lives.

I turned to a friend of mine in the military police’s intelligence division, but nothing turned up to the point of it being ominous.

It is as if someone has carefully erased his entire past.

It was Dazai attempting to rescue the trapped kidnapping victims in the abandoned hospital which triggered the poisoned gas.

But even then, not so much as a glimpse of him showed up on the security footage.

How did he manage to hide from this candid photograph?

Oh, that crafty Azure Apostle. The puppet master who never dirtied their own hands.

Brilliant mental powers. Acting skills fine enough to hoodwink half an embassy. Knowledge of the black market organ trade.

I started the car and resumed driving.

“Dazai.”

“What?”

“We’re going to take a detour.”

I turned the steering wheel and drove us onto a mountain road.

This road was an isolated one with no watching eyes.

We drove further up the mountain into an abandoned warehouse.

Dazai looked at the warehouse and asked, “What is this place?”

“It’s a warehouse I’ve used before for work. It was once used to store industrial processing materials, but it was left here when the company relocated overseas. Now nobody even comes near it. I go here to hold private conversations.”

“Wow. Sounds fun,” Dazai said half-heartedly.

Once inside, I parked the car.

All four walls of the warehouse still stood, so I had no need to worry of anyone nearby seeing in. If any reinforcements came, the sound would be sure to tip me off.

“Get out,” I ordered.

Dazai stepped out without a word. Before I followed him, I opened my handgun’s magazine and checked the bullets.

I opened my notebook, added a few words to it, and then left the car.

“Sure is quiet in here. This really is the spot for secret conversations. So? What did you want to talk abo-”

I pointed the gun at Dazai.

“... What is that gun for?”

“Take a guess.”

“Please wait, Kunikida; I’m begging you. I thought you hated these kinds of jokes.”

“That I do. That’s why this isn’t a joke.”

“- What did he tell you on the phone earlier? Whatever it was, you have the wrong idea. If you just tell me, then I’ll be able to explain the whole thing to you.”

“Yes, tell me,” I said, readying my finger on the trigger. “Why is that at the abandoned hospital, when the poison gas killed the victims… you very nicely avoided having your face caught on the security cameras?”

“Oh, that?” Dazai asked with a puzzled expression. “That’s because I happened to notice them right as we walked in. But we noticed the kidnapping case victims right away, so I just couldn’t point them out to you in time. I’m sorry about that, but-”

“Really now? So you knew what those cameras were for from the moment you saw them?” I continued pressing him. “Now for my second issue. You were the one who suggested we go to the embassy in order to find the bomber. How did you come up with that immediately? Was it because you already knew about Alamta?”

“My god, are you serious? Right on the nose, yes, praiseworthy, yes, but when have I given you reason to doubt me? Where is this distrust coming from?”

“Where did you learn about the black market organ trade syndicate?”

“Well, that was… you know, at the bar…”

“You need to learn to come up with better lies. Was meeting Mr. Taneda of the Special Abilities Department really a coincidence?”

“Wait… wait, I say! Won’t you please put down the gun? Then I’ll talk.”

“Why were the Azure Apostle’s emails sent from your computer?! Answer me!” I shouted.

Dazai’s face went blank.

“I see. So that really was Rokuzou on the phone? He’s good for a kid of his age…. He’d make a good detective someday.”

His voice was calm and didn’t display a trace of emotion - not one single trace.

I couldn’t begin to guess what Dazai’s true character was, not even if I tried. He was one part an impression of a strong warrior and one part personification of crafty intelligence and artifice.

Who could say if Dazai’s current persona was no more than a feat of acting as great as the one he displayed in the embassy?

“Give me a proper answer now, or else I’ll shoot.”

“You won’t shoot,” said Dazai with a shake of his head. “You are a scrupulous idealist. It is your ideal to solve all the mysteries, arrest all the guilty parties, and deliver them to justice. You wouldn’t shoot a possibly innocent suspect.”

“Justice is ineffective in the face of the Azure Apostle.” I knew I would be hard pressed to have him prosecuted without him committing the kidnappings or murders himself. “I will shoot if that is what it is right.”

“If, perhaps, the moment arrives where you find a sign of him having an otherwise wicked, evil nature - you will shoot.”

Those were the president’s words to me.

He entrusted me with this heavy gun.

“You should do what is right.”

“Kunikida. Even supposing I were the Azure Apostle and your ideals dictate you shoot me - you still wouldn’t be able to do it.”

A cruel light twinkled in Dazai’s eyes.

They were eyes of penetrating intelligence, eyes which saw through everything.

“Recall, if you will. The only things you found on Alamta’s dead body were pocket change and a driver’s license. Then where was the bomb activation switch?”

The switch was a device which remotely activated the bomb.

Lacking that, this bomb threat was an only empty one the entire time.

“The puppet master pulling Alamta’s strings- they have it.”

“Yes. And what about, just supposing, the puppet master knows the Agency’s every movement? Then suppose they also knew the Agency discovered the bomb’s hiding spot? Wouldn’t the puppet master simply move the bomb somewhere else and engage a backup plan?”

Dazai had slipped his hand into his right coat pocket without my noticing.

The hand gripped something in that pocket, but I wasn’t about to check what it was from this distance.

Did I want to ask if there was another bomb?

He could press that switch any time now.

Therefore I could not shoot him.

Oh, I had been too naive.

“I already know what you’re thinking. Look at this.”

I took “this” from my pocket and put it on the ground in front of me.

“This is the same radio jammer I used earlier at the tackle shop. It blocks all radio waves in a five hundred meter radius of me. Your remote detonation switch is not an exception to that rule.”

“Wha-” Dazai began, surprise evident on his face.

Keeping my gun trained on him, I thrust my hand into Dazai’s pocket. I felt two objects and pulled them out.

A fountain pen and a blue cloth.

“What a shame. Couldn’t fool you, could I? It’s just an ordinary fountain pen,” Dazai said with a grin.

Yes, this was Dazai’s “favorite pen” he had flaunted at the embassy.

“I might believe you if I were like anyone else. But you’ll need to work a little harder to trick your partner who already knows your methods.”

I twisted the pen cap off. Extending out of the tip was not the ink capsule which had originally been there but a long, thin electrical apparatus.

It was a miniature transceiver.

“Is this the detonation switch?”

“... I knew you would figure it out, Kunikida. Brilliant work.”

Dazai’s smile was cold and inhuman.

“I’m glad that you are my partner after all.”

His words boiled my blood.

“Shut up!”

I shifted my aim and fired off a warning shot.

The bullet smacked into the floor at Dazai’s feet, but Dazai didn’t so much as pale.

“What are you trying to do?! Why did you orchestrate all this and threaten the Agency?! What reason could you possibly have for murdering those poor victims and planting a bomb?! You are… you are…!”

No matter how talented he was- so talented, in fact, he had proved an exceptional partner. No matter that.

“This is your final warning. Explain everything, or else I shoot.”

Who was Dazai?

Who was the Azure Apostle?

The Apostle did nothing themself, but forced criminals to commit terrible wrongdoings and then murdered them.

They murdered criminals to-

Aspire to an ideal world.

Not with the noble hands of God, but with our own imperfect, blood-stained hands.

It couldn’t be.

I looked at the blue cloth in my hand. The very same cloth I had grabbed from Dazai’s pocket.

Hadn’t I recently seen a cloth like this?

“I heard that the explosion was so large they were unable to identify even a trace of his body.

“Perhaps he faked his own death and ran into hiding…”

The was already aware of the Azure King’s identity. He was once an elite bureaucrat.

But it wasn’t impossible for him to have changed his face and obfuscated his past with the help of a professional.

Perhaps he also had methods through which he hoodwinked the police crime scene analysts.

“I had one of the office staff look into Dazai’s personal history. However, there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Perhaps he was Dazai.

“Are you - are you the Azure King? Did you hatch this ambitious plot to exact your revenge on the Agency?”

He said, “Please shoot me.”

Dazai’s smile moved beyond mere happiness. He wore an expression of tranquility.

“This is your victory, Kunikida. Shoot me now. That’s what you said you would do, and it is the right thing to do. And you have the correct qualifications.”

“What qualifications do you mean?!”

“I don’t mind as long as you’re the one shooting me.”

This was wrong. I didn’t want to do this. But as long as Dazai refused to tell me the truth-

“If, perhaps, the moment arrives where you find a sign of him having an otherwise wicked, evil nature-”

This was wrong. I needed to find the truth.

“You will shoot.”

He said he wouldn’t mind being shot as long as I shot him?

Oh.

So this was what was going on.

“I understand now.”

I aimed the gun to point in between Dazai’s eyes.

I pulled my arms into my sides, shut one eye, and focused my aim. I could not miss at this distance.

“I will shoot you, Dazai. I truly will. You might at least show a bit of fear.”

Dazai’s calm smile never wavered. He said once more, “Please shoot me.”

I hesitated no longer.

I pulled the trigger.

The bullet exploded from the barrel.

My aim was true. It cleaved the air in two before striking Dazai dead between the eyes.

The impact knocked his body backwards. It floated in the air for a moment before it collapsed to the ground.

I lowered the gun. A stream of white smoke wafted from the barrel.

I stood there in silence.

I had not missed, and the bullet had struck Dazai in the center of his skull.

There was no way I could have missed at that distance.

I put the safety back on to prevent it from accidentally firing and returned it to my breast pocket.

I took the detonation switch disguised as a pen which had come from Dazai and smashed it with all my might. Now it was crushed flat in my palm, its function effectively destroyed.

I needed to think about my next move. I began walking back to the car.

I had only gone a few steps when my cell phone rang. Now that I was out of range of the jammer, messages could come through once more.

I blankly checked the caller ID. It was from the Agency.

“Hello.”

Dr. Yosano was on the other end of the line.

“Is this Kunikida? We’re in big trouble! We received another threat from that oaf who calls himself the Azure Apostle! I’ll forward it to you, so get moving now!”

“But I’m-”

The phone switched screens to show me her forwarded text, cutting off the call.

I pulled up the letter, and this is what it said.

Dear Sirs and Madams,

I must request your efforts a third time.

I have taken the liberty of having an interference signal transmitted to the engine and yoke of a passenger aircraft currently in flight known as JA815S.

I ask that you neutralize this signal and ensure the safety of its passengers.

My apologies, but I thank you for your understanding.

Yours,

The Azure Apostle

“An… airplane?”

What awful timing.

Stopping an attack on an airplane would be even more difficult than the kidnapping case or the bomb case. It would be nigh-on impossible to board the craft and remove a transmission device itself. One would need a military fighter aircraft for that. But no, even with the army’s support, a passenger plane would be sure to have countermeasures against skyjackers. Back to the drawing board.

Suppose the engine and steering of a plane ceases to function, I said to myself. What exactly would that entail?

It is possible for aircraft, once in flight, to shut off its thrust and cruise for a short period of time on its lift alone. But even then, if the plane can’t be piloted, it will lose altitude and eventually crash. If steering is impossible, even performing a relatively safer water landing is tricky. Never once in the history of the universe had a plane crashed to the ground and had all of its passengers survive.

This third threat promised that inescapable fate.

There was only one way I could stop it.

I looked over to Dazai’s body.

It lay where he had fallen, facing upwards with its eyes closed.

I walked over to it.

“How long are you going to play dead for? Get up, fool. We need to get moving.”

I kicked his body.

“Aww, come on! Can’t I sleep five more minutes?” he pouted.

“Is it the next emergency?”

“Uh-huh. The real culprit threatened us with a plane crash. If you’re not responsible for all of this, then help me.”

Dazai grinned with his eyes closed. “I knew you wouldn’t shoot me with your real gun.”

“You are despicable. That was a fine piece of strategy, but you didn’t need to rope me into your little skit.”

I tossed Dazai the gun with which I had shot him.

He reached up and caught it.

It reverted back to a notebook page in his hand.

“But how did you know for sure? The president gave me an identical model. What if I shot you with that instead?”

“Because I trust you, of course. There’s no way that the prim and proper Kunikida would ever threaten me with a real gun.”

“You sully the word ‘trust’.”

The gun I had fired at Dazai with was created from one of my notebook pages and Doppo Poet.

I created the bullet likewise so it would vanish the instant it hit his body.

“What tipped you off?” he asked.

“What you told me.”

Dazai didn’t really mean that he wouldn’t have minded me shooting him. I had learned from my time working with him that a good 90% of such disgusting lines as these were only meant to tease. What he was really saying, practically jumping with joy for, was “kill me with that.” It was an odd situation, but in truth, Dazai was an odd man.

“It was also the pen. This isn’t a detonation switch. It’s a listening device, correct?”

Dazai beamed. “How insightful of you.”

I didn’t go around putting on airs by calling myself a detective. Once I looked at it up close, I could see it was no detonation switch.

Dazai acted out this scene in order to disable the listening device with my signal jammer.

“When did they switch this with the other pen you had?”

“At the tackle shop. Remember when we pushed aside all those people who came to gawk at the body? It was one of them who did it. Crap, and it really was my favorite pen! You should reimburse me for it, even though it was awfully hard to write with.”

“Is that when you acquired this blue cloth as well?”

They probably intended to frame Dazai as the mastermind of these events.

However, they were not successful.

“Look now. You knew they touched you but didn’t even tell me you so much as passed by them?”

“Of course,” he answered. “Rather, it was for the moment when you thought I had been playing the role of the puppeteer the entire time. I let them get close enough to me to plant a bug on so I could actually plant a tracker on them. They have to get up much earlier than this to outwit me.”

Dazai had seen through the enemy’s entire plot and played along with it.

The Azure Apostle consistently used other criminals to their dirty work without letting a drop of blood fall on their own hands. Every aspect of the kidnappings, the bomb threat, and the murders was designed to avoid drawing suspicion to themself.

Then who was to say that even the Apostle role couldn’t be handed to anyone else?

That was what Dazai thought.

“I first realized something was up when the gas appeared back at the abandoned hospital. You see, I didn’t even touch the terminal. And yet, poof! Gas. That meant that the puppeteer was watching me and meant to frame me for it, but they had to have been watching remotely. Why would they do such a thing? That was when I began to have my suspicions.”

The Apostle intended to make a counterfeit Apostle.

And a newcomer with a murky past made the perfect scapegoat.

However, Dazai made no move to disrupt their scheme.

“The opponent that we’re dealing with will never step into the limelight. They destroy every possible clue or piece of evidence. But there is also a moment when they must make a point of contact with the outside world. That’s the moment when they make their puppets. They must allow themselves a single chance to contact the real perpetrator; I am speaking of the bomb maker and the taxi driver. That is why I became a perpetrator as well. It is the only way to catch them. If you hadn’t realized what was really going on, Kunikida, I would have been locked up like a common criminal.”

Then Dazai, continuing to act like a perfect framed puppet, disabled the listening device in a very natural turn of events. The puppet master, now noticing the end of the transmission, surely thought their plan worked as intended.

He only had mere moments without being monitored.

In order to throw them off their guard, he refused to explain the situation and let me be consumed by doubt.

Once again, I was filled with admiration.

What a remarkable man.

The enemy was likewise the embodiment of cunning in manipulating such a veteran bomber. One needed quite the discerning eye to see through the false accusations of our foe.

And yet Dazai took all that into account for his own plan and retaliated with a scheme like a harpoon, dragging the Apostle out of hiding.

“Well now, I’m sure the person who planted that device can’t stop laughing. My own Agency doubting me and blaming me for the crime, just as they planned! And now is the perfect time for them to make their next move.”

I nodded. The timing with the latest threat was surely no coincidence.

Our foe must have heard my conversation with Dazai through the listening device and believed I executed him. Well, that was almost the case.

Then they waited for the moment of Dazai’s fall to launch their third threat.

“What awful timing for the Agency this would be. We can’t exactly hop on the plane and put the device out of commission that way. And just when you had thought you had shot the man sending the letters, it turns out you were mistaken! You would have been at a loss. It would have been the end of the Agency.”

He was right. That was exactly how it would have gone if we had all played along with their script.

That is to say, if anyone but Dazai had been my partner.

“There’s only one method we can resort to now… follow the tracker you planted on them, and strike the foe in their lair!”

Dazai rose to his feet. “Catching ‘em off guard, eh?”

Leaving the listening device with the signal jammer in the warehouse, we set off in the company car.

Dazai booted up a portable GPS tracking program. The tracker had stopped relatively nearby, in the mountains. I asked the Agency to gather intelligence on the area for us. If it was the enemy’s base, then we couldn’t ignore the possibility of it being guarded.

But before we could hear back from the Agency, we received a message from the airplane.

It was a video call from some device a passenger had serendipitously found on board the plane.

We forwarded the call onto our own device. The screen showed a young passenger filming from her seat.

“I’m… I’m a p-passenger on this p-plane. This is M-mommy’s phone, but Mommy doesn’t feel very good… so it’s m-me instead. The airplane is f-falling, and a ton of people are s-screaming, and crying, and…”

“Shit!” I swore.

The girl couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

The camera shook, and tears streamed down her face as she talked.

“The captain t-told us to stay in our seats…. but no one’s l-listening, and some people are f-fighting…”

“You have reached us on the ground. Can you hear me? I know it must be very hard for you, but please tell me what is happening on the airplane now.”

“It- it keeps d-dropping. T-they said the engine’s not w-working and they c-can’t steer it.”

The girl’s face was a mask of fear, but she seemed to sense that this was critical for her survival and described it to us like her life depended on it.

“Can I ask you something? A-are we all going to d-die…? I’m r-really scared. M-mommy’s not moving, and she’s not responding to me either. S-so, please, please, do something. Please save us…”

Dazai cut in. “Excuse me, miss. Can you hear me? We’re a team of airplane experts. It’s okay. You’ll be all right now. We’ll make the airplane work again. What is your name?”

“Ch… Chiyo.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Chiyo. Don’t worry any more. Do you have any snacks with you?”

“Just a candy… Mama gave it to me.”

“A candy? I like candy too. And you know, I always feel better after I eat one.”

“Come on, Dazai.”

“It’s fine. Give me a moment. … Chiyo, go ahead and eat that candy slowly. Make it last. And while you do that, please take this device to the pilot’s cockpit. Do you know where that is?’

She nodded while wiping her tears.

“There won’t be any shouting people in there. Then you’ll be okay. Then your mommy will be okay too.”

“I… can’t go by myself. Mommy’s right here.”

“Your mommy will be fine. The pilot will know what to do. So please go find them and give them this device. Okay?”

The girl hung her head, trembling, for a moment before rising, candy in hand, and finally setting off toward the cockpit.

I gripped the steering wheel with all my might.

“This is the pilot for passenger aircraft 8185S speaking. Our engine is stopped, and we are currently coasting on our inertia. May I ask who you are?” the pilot asked. He was a man past forty with the look about him of an accomplished pilot.

I answered, “We are the Armed Detective Agency. The police can’t make it in time, so we are handling your situation. Please tell me what’s happening.”

“The Armed Detective Agency?” said the pilot. “The people who let those kidnapping victims die from poison gas? Oh god, will we be all right? By any chance-”

“My apologies, but we are the only ones who are fully informed of your situation. It will take a few hours for the news to fully travel the military police chain of command.”

“We don’t have a few hours! Virtually all devices on this plane are non-operational. Forget turning the plane; we can’t even accelerate it. By my reckoning, we’ll hit the ground within an hour!”

“Please listen to me,” I said. “This is the work of subversive human agents. Are there any suspicious devices or signs of tampering in your plane?”

“... The copilot spotted a huge metal box in the cargo hold. As I understand it, it is connected to the plane’s wiring and welded to the floor of the plane itself. We can’t break it or remove it with the tools we have on hand.”

Now I understood. It was probably this device that interfered with the plane’s systems.

The criminal responsible had infiltrated one of the passenger planes in the the airplane hangar and had welded in a device which paralyzed all the operational systems. The device was remotely activated after liftoff, and the rest was history.

I remembered a paper I had once read. The old national defense force was supposedly developing equipment designed to stop enemy planes in flight; ultimately, they abandoned the project before its completion, but it still bore a striking resemblance to this current situation.

If this was the same sort of device, then that meant it could be controlled by radio signals from the ground. Therefore, if we disabled it via the ground device, the plane stood a strong chance of returning to normal operations.

I said, “Sir, we will now disable the device paralyzing your plane. Please prepare to ascend once you receive our signal.”

“Rodger that. But if we lose too much height, we won’t have enough time to regain altitude. Please hurry. We have four hundred passengers on board. By my calculations, we have one hour before crashing into Yokohama.”

One hour.

No matter how they came down, there was no way to avoid almost every single passenger dying. Furthermore, if they crashed into any secretive tax haven on the ground, the damage would only multiply. This was a bigger disaster in the making than even Alamta’s bomb.

We had no time.

I floored the gas pedal.

We raced through the mountains, following Dazai’s tracker.

The surrounding area was uninhabited, and the overgrown shrubbery threw shadows across the car tires.

“Is this the place?”

I stopped the car. In front of me was an iron door in the very face of the mountain itself.

This was a relic of the war, the entrance to a bomb shelter and an old military installation for the former national defense force.

Now out of use, the base lay abandoned, waiting to fall into disrepair. I understood why our foes chose it immediately. No one would pay any attention to people carrying machinery in or even firing off artillery here.

Suddenly, gunshots rang out on all sides, and a storm of bullets bore down on the car. The car’s metal body screamed under the onslaught.

“We’re under attack! Get out of the car!”

I floored the accelerator, and the car shot into motion. At the same moment, we leapt from the car and dashed into the woods.

“That proves it! This has to be the place…”

We were being shot at with rifles from behind the cover of a rock higher up the slope. There were three… no, four of them.

“What should we do?” Dazai shouted as he hid in the shadow of the slope.

“They’re trying to stall us! I’ll cover you; get inside!” A bullet whizzed past my ear.

I quickly sized up the situation. All the gunmen were doing was shooting randomly from behind cover. Their guns were good, but they could not hold a candle to anything like a Port Mafia weapon.

“Doppo Poet - flash grenade!”

At this rate I would run out of pages in my poor notebook!

I tossed the grenade, and it exploded in a burst of light over the enemies’ heads. Their attack faltered.

I grabbed my handgun and returned fire. “Now go!” I yelled at Dazai. He snapped up and broke into a run.

Dazai left Kunikida and sprinted into the abandoned bomb shelter.

The transmitter signal came from the maintenance building beyond the shelter itself. Dazai scrambled through a shaft and bolted across a switchyard. There he found the two-story iron maintenance building.

The abandoned building consisted of a first-floor automobile and airplane hangar and a second-floor communications room overlooking the hangar. He hurried up the stairs and into the room.

“Is it here?”

The flooring was discolored, but everything was covered in rust except for a brand-new hinge on the door. An empty liquor bottle sat on the desk, and cigar ash still floated through the air. Someone used this room frequently.

A large transmitter on the wall was lit up to indicate it was still in use.

Just as Dazai drew near it, a shadow loomed up behind him.

A large, foreign-looking man cast it. How long had he stood behind Dazai, watching and waiting?

The man had dark brown skin and a muscular build. A camellia flower was inked on one arm. His pupils were a dark green. A pattern of old scars ran across his bald head.

He stared down Dazai silently before barking, “What are you doing here?”

“What, you say? Well, isn’t it obvious? I’m here to warn you!” Dazai said, looking back over his shoulder. “The detectives found this base! If you don’t hurry and get out, it’ll be your head on the line. Where’s the boss? They’ll break through the entrance in minutes! We don’t have any time!”

He scrambled to his feet.

“I don’t recognize you,” the giant said.

“Of course you don’t. I’m a spy; no one but the boss knows who I am. You know how they are. Everything’s top secret, right? Whatever, just hurry up and call the boss already! I’m begging you!”

The confused look on the man’s face evaporated. “On it,” he said.

He turned on his heel and began to leave the room, turning his back on Dazai in the process.

Smash!

The man fell to the floor in one slow movement. His bald head now sported a huge, new bruise.

Dazai stood behind him with a grin and half of a broken liquor bottle.

“Everything about the boss is top secret. I have a feeling you’ve never even met them.”

He tossed aside the bottle and turned back to the transmitter.

“This bad boy will only be fit for a stoplight when I’m done with it.”

After suppressing the rifle squadron, I set off after Dazai.

Compared to the attack I had faced at the entrance, the military complex was as silent as the tomb. Judging from the fresh footprints and tire tracks scattered here and there, this was definitely the group’s hideout, but I couldn’t make heads or tails enough of them to follow Dazai. Besides, he was the one with the tracker, not me.

But just as I walked past an iron maintenance building, I heard the sound of shattering glass.

Was that Dazai fighting an enemy?

I pressed my back to the wall and raised my gun before leaping through the entrance and swiveling the muzzle back and forth, searching for the enemy.

The first floor appeared to be an armored vehicle and aircraft hangar, but it was now deserted, the ground bare. The second floor was likely a communications room and an office. If the transmitter were in here somewhere, the second floor was the best bet, but-

Just then, my body shivered with an intense feeling of discomfort.

It felt like countless invisible bugs were crawling around under my skin. It was unbearable. I fell to my knees.

I noticed a kind of pattern sketched into the ground at my feet: a collection of circles and lines forming various figures and letters from an indecipherable ancient language. It looked like a summoning circle from a magical grimoire for some sort of ritual. It was stepping on this, I realized, which caused the awful sensation.

Struck by a sudden horrible intuition, I rolled up my sleeve.

The number “39” stood out against my skin.

I checked my entire body. I found nine of the tattoo-like numbers etched onto every part of my skin I could see - my chest, my arms, my ankles. They were definitely not there a few minutes ago.

“Your, your numbers are late,” a reedy voice said. I reflexively pointed my gun in its direction.

The voice’s owner was a short boy - no, a short young man. He staggered over to me as I kept the gun trained on him.

“Don’t move!” I yelled. “We are the Armed Detective-” I was unable to finish my sentence as a blow I never saw coming struck me in the side and sent me flying.

I was knocked flat. Then another blow violently slapped me into the ground once more before slamming me into the iron wall. It contorted under my weight.

My head spun. The world turned circles around me. Those violent attacks had thrown off my sense of balance. I needed to retaliate-

I somehow managed to grab my handgun which had fallen near me.

A transparent shockwave hit me again and bent me backwards. My bones screamed in agony. The gun flew out of my hands.

“You, you sure are a lively one. You must have a good number on you,” the skinny young man said. He picked up my gun and looked down its barrel as it were some sort of curious object.

One thing was clear - he was an Ability user, and his Ability was suited for long-range fighting.

I happened to glance at one of the numbers on my skin. It now read “32”.

No way-

“The Armed Detective Agency must be pretty good at their jobs to sniff us out. Yeah, that’s what I call a real detective.”

He aimed the gun at me and fired off its bullets. He emptied the magazine until the firing pin struck at empty air.

The bullets hit the ground in front of me.

“Aw man, that’s no good,” the young man said. “You’ve got a great number, so a gun’s not gonna do the trick, huh? That’s no good at all.”

He walked toward me with a faint, morbid grin. “That number drops whenever you get hurt. It also drops as time passes. And when it reaches zero-”

“Are you… are you the one who killed Alamta and the driver?” I asked.

The young man cackled. “You, you really are a detective, aren’tcha?”

I looked him up and down. He was slim, blond, and clad in a parka which had seen better days. Overall, he certainly didn’t look like the type suited for combat.

Yet I had no doubt.

This man was the enemy boss.

Dazai fussed over the transmitter’s terminal.

“This machine is practically archaic!” he muttered. “With these frequencies and those directions-”

A shadow moved behind his back.

“Oh shoot, it didn’t recognize the last instruction - what, can I not modify its programming without a control key?”

An enormous fist swung through the air and struck him in the temple.

Dazai flew like a ragdoll. He skidded across the floor until he collided with the desk and stopped with a dull thud.

“... That’s going to leave a mark,” Dazai joked as he staggered to his feet. His smile was gruesome. Blood trickled down his cheek.

The large man, expressionless, walked up to Dazai. His fists were like two huge hammers; he could have been a character out of a fighting game[1].

He swung his fist for another blow. Dazai pushed off from the desk and avoided the hit. The fists of steel slammed into the wooden desktop and pulverized it.

“Wow, that’s strong!” Dazai called. “You should take up being a porter.”

Dazai’s movement across the floor opened up the distance between himself and the giant man.

“Oh, poor me! What a plight I am in. If I were to fight a big, manly man like you, I’d be smashed like a china shop by a bull… but I swore I would rescue fair Chiyo!”[2]

“I will not let you use that transmitter,” the giant snarled. He stood in Dazai’s way.

“Really now?” said Dazai. “Then I’d better run away, now shouldn’t I?”

He suddenly turned tail and sprinted away.

“Wait!” the other man cried.

Dazai dashed out the door. The large man gave chase.

As Dazai ran, he closed the door behind him. Just as the large man reached out to open it, Dazai smashed through the door and delivered a flying dropkick!

Unable to withstand Dazai’s weight and prevented from any defensive maneuvers by the door itself, the man staggered backwards. The smashed door rained splinters of wood down around him.

“Strrrrrrike!” Dazai howled. He stepped forward for another attack.

The large man recovered as quickly as if he hadn’t been hurt at all. He aimed a low kick at Dazai’s knee. Dazai anticipated the kick and jumped away to avoid it.

“Boy, are you tough!” he called.

The man put his back into throwing a right hook. Dazai twisted his upper body to dodge it, but a scrap of his clothing caught in the man’s knuckles. The man dragged Dazai forward, throwing him off balance.

“Shoot-!”

The giant drove his fist into Dazai’s stomach. He wasted no time before winding up another punch to finish Dazai off, and then smack! Dazai flew across the room.

After taking a blow from a man who could pulverize a desk with his bare fists, Dazai’s body crumpled into a sideways “v”[3]. He crashed into the wall on the opposite side of the room. Blood trickled out from between his lips.

The man chased after him. His powerful arm descended like a club and caught Dazai’s cheek with a backhand blow so hard it about snapped Dazai’s neck.

Dazai shakily climbed to his feet.

“Not only are you a behemoth, but you’re fast as well…. Were you raised by gorillas?” Dazai joked as he sized up the situation.

He couldn’t win.

He glanced out the window to the sprawling hangar below.

And there he saw Kunikida, embroiled in battle with his own opponent.

I charged at the young man. Having lost my gun, the only way I could gain the upper hand was with hand-to-hand combat.

He stepped back, but I paid that no mind and advanced forward, reaching out to grab his arm.

My martial arts repertoire was by and large a collection of throws designed to use the opponent’s speed against them. Therefore in situations like this where they would not come to me, I had to catch them first.

The man pulled back, almost collapsing on himself, to avoid me. As I stepped forward to grab him, he raised his arm once again. I stopped in my tracks.

Here comes a shock wave!

I dropped flat to the ground and dodged the wave radiating from his arm.

Or rather, I tried to, but the wave hit me anyway.

I snapped backwards and flew up into the air. Every bone in my body screamed with agony. My mind couldn’t keep up with the sudden acceleration. It was like I blacked out for a moment.

But yes - I had meant to dodge. So why-

“You can’t escape my Ability. It’s not a shockwave. I can make anyone with my numbers move in whichever - whichever - whichever way I want. So-”

“Gh?!”

My spine groaned. The young man dropped his hand, and I slammed to the ground. It was as if at that very moment, my weight increased ten thousand fold.

“Like swatting a bug!” he crowed.

As he raised and lowered his arm, I struck the ground again and again. It felt like being hit repeatedly by a train. A bone snapped; my skin tore.

The numbers dropped to “21”.

“Those numbers are your remaining lifespan! And when they reach zero, you’ll writhe in agony and die! No one can escape their fate! No one! No one! No one! No one!”

My body finally stopped jumping about, but I could no longer lift even a finger. It felt like my muscles were torn to shreds. A hot liquid trickled from my mouth in tandem with my breathing.

“Giving up already, Mr. Armed Detective?”

The man drew carelessly close to me, but I could not move from where I was pinned to the ground. My joints whined in pain.

“I’m glad that right from the start, I got to kill you all off one by one. It’s too bad that the rookie we framed never brought you all down from the inside. You ended up finding him out, huh?”

He stepped forward and kicked my head. Red fireworks danced behind my eyes, yet there was nothing I could do to counter him.

“But look on the bright side,” he said. “If I kill- if I kill you here, and my men take out the rookie upstairs, then the airplane will crash, and everyone will know that it was the Agency’s fault. Then Yokohama will be a pretty good place to do our business, don’t you think?”

“What… business do you speak of?” I asked.

“Sorry, but we smuggle the kind of stuff that makes us wary of private organizations like yours. We do a brisk trade buying organs and selling weapons.”

Organs for - weapons.

These people were the black market organ trade syndicate!

The Port Mafia served as the vendors for organs, chemical weapons, and criminal personnel. Dealing entirely in illegal products for underhanded organizations, this group was the general trading company of the criminal underworld. They oversaw countless shady operations and formed connections with criminal organizations across the globe.

“We learned from the Azure King case you know. You can’t afford to underestimate the Armed Detective Agency. We’re cautious in our transactions, and we destroy dangerous threats right off the bat. Those are the first rules of our trade.”

I stole a glance at one of my numbers. 11. And once that number reached 0, I would meet the same fate as Alamta and the taxi driver.

“I was under the impression… that weapons are quite expensive in the foreign market.”

“This place is home to the Port Mafia, foreign disputes, and lawless districts within the city itself. It’s a good town for business.”

I had to agree with him; Yokohama was a perpetual hotbed of violence.

For an arms dealer, arriving in Yokohama must have felt the same as a navigator landing their ship on the shores of a new frontier. They could buy organs or even reckless hoodlums to sell to foreign organizations while simultaneously smuggling weapons and veteran soldiers into the country.

Laws and morals didn’t apply to the criminal underground which drew in new dealers of death from overseas.

However.

“... You can’t hand out weapons as simply as passing out flowers. Even the most trivial argument on a street corner somewhere can end in death if one party has a knife or a gun. This whole thing is…”

“Oh ho, whatcha up to over there?”

The young man raised his arm, and I flew upwards. The air was squeezed out of my lungs at the same moment as my notebook tumbled from its hiding spot at my chest.

Shoot!

“Playing for time and writing in your notebook, weren’t you? But it’s pointless, I tell you, utterly pointless. I know how your Ability works. And now your notebook is mine.”

He lifted it overhead and waved it about.

My Ability has always had two weaknesses. Writing in the middle of action has always proved a challenge, and I am powerless if my notebook is taken.

Now my Ability was entirely sealed.

I had a wiregun I had created in a previous fight stowed away behind my back, but it wasn’t powerful enough to do enough harm to my opponent.

Yet I still could not give up. That was the one thing I simply could not do.

After all, I always did what was right.

I struggled to my feet, ignoring the intense pain shooting up and down my whole body.

“Look at you... not dead yet, huh? Then I better give you another serving of pain!”

He attacked again. I found myself flung backwards and cast to the ground.

I coughed up blood. The world grew dim. I no longer had the faintest clue what shape I was in anymore.

“Now, just to be on the safe side,” The young man pulled a tiny key from his pocket. “I have a key with me. It is the key which disables the device sending interference signals to the airplane. You can’t save the plane without it. Do you want it? You want it, don’t you?”

I stared at it. It was a brittle-looking, dirty, yellow key.

“If you want it, then here.”

The man put all his strength into snapping it in half.

“Wha-”

He cackled. “And with this, the Agency is doomed! No one can prevent the crash now. You’re finished. You’re finished, I tell you!” He roared with derisive laughter once more. It was a laugh that could boil mud, a scornful cackle like the end of the world.

“Come now, let’s put an end to this. I’ll kill you, and then I shall cry in triumph!”

He raised his arm once more.

The number on my skin read “01”.

Without thinking, I glanced at the communications room on the second floor.

And there was Dazai. Dazai covered with injuries, Dazai about to be struck-

Kunikida was below the window. He was wounded from head to toe.

The large man attacked again. The force of the blow to Dazai’s cheek crashed him into the window glass.

The glass shattered.

Dazai saw Kunikida.

Their eyes locked.

Dazai screamed.

“Kunikida!”

“Dazai!”

And with only that, I knew exactly what I had to do.

I quickly whipped the wiregun out and fired it at Dazai.

My aim was true, and the gun’s hook struck the wall immediately behind him.

I wound in the wire, and my body sailed into the air.

Dazai leapt out the window.

He kicked off the frame as he went and twisted his body in midair.

As he writhed, his eyes locked on Kunikida.

Likewise, Dazai caught Kunikida’s eye. He shot his wiregun and used it to leave the ground.

They met in midair, silently communicated with another, and went their separate ways.

The strength of the wiregun’s shot catapulted me away.

Dazai jumped out the window, and I passed him as he twisted in midair.

I landed just below the communications room window. I used the gun’s upward momentum to run up the wall the last few meters.

“Ohhhh!” I roared.

I jumped into the room, spraying glass shards everywhere.

A man with dark brown skin stood before me with both hands curled into fists.

Those fists look like they could have easily beaten me to a pulp. He immediately took a swing.

The huge man went flying.

The umpteenth throw crashed him through the window and fall to the floor below.

When I looked out the window, I saw him lying unconscious on the ground. I judged he would likely wake up.

I glanced down at myself and found the numbers had disappeared. So Dazai had likewise defeated his opponent, I presumed.

My goodness. What an ordeal that was.

I now turned to the transmitter. The only thing left to do was switch it off.

Using an old-fashioned terminal, I scoped out the frequency and the direction of the signal. Even though it was quite an older model, I was able to make it work after a fashion.

“Kunikida!” Dazai came galloping up the stairs. “We need to use a key to stop the transmitter! But that fool used his final moments to break it!”

Wide-eyed, he presented the broken key to me.

“I know that already,” I informed him.

“We can’t use the transmitter! The airplane-”

“I’m always running into trouble, but this? Everyday stuff. That’s why I have this.”

I reached into my back pocket and produced a sheet of paper.

“I always carry a notebook page for emergencies.”

I unfolded the paper and traced a few words in my blood onto the page. “Doppo Poet – cancellation key!” I yelled.

The paper shapeshifted into a copy of the yellow key.

“You know, once I take a good look at something, my Ability can produce an exact replica of it.”

Even Dazai, of all people, grew wide-eyed at this. “R… really?”

“Yes. Are you surprised? I surprised you, didn’t I? Now you owe me a drink.”

I put the key into the transmitter and turned it. A green light lit up on the console.

I jabbed the override button.

“That should let the plane resume normal operations! Dazai, tell the pilot!” I cried.

“I’m already on it,” he replied.

Just as we turned to leave the building, we heard a low rumbling sound like the sky itself was trembling.

That sound was-

As we ran outside, the sound grew to a deafening level.

“Pilot!” Dazai yelled. “Can you hear me?! We stopped the blocker! You should be able to fly again, so hurry and go up!”

“We’re working on it! But we’ve lost too much altitude! Oh shit, we’re not going to make it!”

That sound was the rumble of the jet engines drawing too close to the ground!

Dazai and I skidded outside.

The plane cast a huge shadow on the ground. The sky roared with the thunderous noise. I looked up.

There directly in front of me, hanging low in the sky, was the behemoth plane drawing closer! It passed over my head and continued on its collision course – in the direction of town.

Don’t crash, I thought at it. You can’t crash.

Don’t crash. Fly up. Fly.

“Fly!” I howled.

The plane’s shadow receded, and the craft surged up into the air.

It climbed steadily, stirring up a surge of tornado-strength winds below it, and flew off into the setting sun.

It did it. It flew.

We had made it in time.

Dazai and I continued to watch the white airplane steeped in the deep red evening sky long after it vanished from sight with a twinkle