Whoosh—
It was hard to describe what that instant felt like.
It seemed to last only a split second, or perhaps an impossibly long life had already passed, as his soul quietly ascended into a higher dimension.
[Beika] slowly unfolded all that It was.
The movement of the crowds, the workings of the underground water system, flowers blooming soundlessly, buildings weathered by the years...
With a single turn of his gaze, everything lay before his eyes.
It was as though this vibrant city had generated a dynamic 3D model of impossible precision. Every single thing was clearly visible. There was not one hidden corner left concealed.
Those emerald eyes closed and opened again. “He” looked at the culprit in this case.
Before his eyes, scenes seemed to flicker past.
A toddling child took one step after another under her mother’s gentle encouragement.
A girl stepping into school for the first time clutched her backpack straps, excited and curious.
The unease of entering the workforce, the joy of making close friends, the happiness of marriage.
The important fragments of a life flashed by one after another.
—A city always watched with equal gentleness every living being raised within Its embrace, recording the little moments they themselves might already have forgotten.
Then the fragments began to slow.
Tanimura Rie discovered that her husband not only seemed to have dealings with criminal forces, but had even married her only for her family’s wealth.
Domestic violence. Cheating. And worse, he used the power of those criminal connections to threaten her into silence, forcing her to swallow everything and endure it.
The final straw came when she realized that the person this complete scumbag was cheating with was her best friend.
It was a threat too obvious to miss.
And her friend was such a lovely, innocent person, completely unaware of the true face of the man she had fallen in love with.
In a fury, Tanimura Rie once threw caution to the wind and went to the police. All she got in return was that man coming home and reacting as though it were nothing at all.
That organization actually had people inside the police.
Her silent cries for help were never heard. Her desperate struggle bought her nothing except even crueler beatings.
At last, she fell into despair.
She thought about it day and night, until finally—on this day.
Her friend told her that the man had proposed to her, and wanted to invite a few friends out to celebrate over a meal.
And on this day, Tanimura Rie succeeded in killing him.
—She had long since noticed that whenever that man went out to eat, he always drank beer served in a glass. More than that, he especially liked biting the ice cubes to pieces, chewing them up, and swallowing them.
Perhaps he found the act of crushing ice satisfying. She did not know. She only knew that she had chosen to lace the ice with cyanide, and then quietly wait for the man to die.
When she watched him collapse, choking for air, she felt no guilt.
Only relief and peace.
Mixed into that was the sorrow that she might never again laugh and fool around with her friends, and the regret of having failed to see through the kind of person he really was.
The police had not arrived yet, and several people in the restaurant had already stepped forward to help solve the case.
“The killer is you, Miss Tanimura.”
The dark green-haired young man delivered his conclusion with crisp certainty.
In truth, she no longer cared whether the truth was discovered. She had already made her peace with it.
Murder was murder. There was nothing more to say.
—Until that young man slowly walked toward her and fixed her with those pure, beautiful emerald eyes.
Tanimura Rie suddenly began to tremble uncontrollably.
How was she supposed to describe that gaze?
It was as though a god had cast Its eyes down from the heavens above.
In that instant, “he” became “It.”
As though stripping her apart layer by layer, It saw through every part of her life with effortless clarity.
What lay in that calm green was not disgust for a murderer, but a deep peace, mixed with a tenderness that was almost divine.
As though It were saying—
Child, I know your suffering. Do not cry. I know it all. I have always been here.
You only took the wrong road.
She had no idea why such an association came to her, but Tanimura Rie suddenly felt an indescribable collapse inside herself. Even the courage to keep hiding the truth was stripped away, leaving behind only endless exhaustion.
She had never wanted to kill anyone...
If she had not truly been driven into a dead end, who would willingly risk throwing away the rest of their life just to take revenge on someone?!
A strange silence filled the restaurant. The dark green-haired young man’s complexion was unnaturally pale, yet he still spoke word by word, unhurriedly laying out both the sorrow behind the case and the method of the crime.
Only the little bridge-and-stream display by the entrance continued to murmur softly, accompanied by Miss Tanimura’s suppressed sobs as tears spilled down her face before she could stop them.
“...That is roughly what happened.” The young man closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again.
He turned his head slightly and let out an almost inaudible sigh.
Kudo Shinichi stood there in a daze. Even Kudo Yusaku had gone grave and thoughtful.
As a devoted admirer of Sherlock Holmes, young Kudo Shinichi naturally knew one of Holmes’s famous lines well: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
But could someone really take one simple look around the scene and then explain the entire sequence of events, even the hidden pain behind it, in such complete detail...?
What was more, he had not presented it in the ordinary fashion—using clues at the scene to arrive at a conclusion.
Instead, he had begun at the beginning and narrated a story. Everything revealed as that story unfolded matched the traces left at the scene exactly. He seemed less like a detective reconstructing a case than a narrator simply recounting what had happened.
This no longer felt like deduction.
It felt... as though he had been present for every part of the story as it happened.
—As though he had seen it all with his own eyes.
Off to the side, Matsuda Jinpei’s expression had darkened.
—Of course, if everything Yuki Mu had just said was true, then anyone with a conscience would feel anything but pleased.
And judging by Miss Tanimura’s emotional reaction, the real situation was probably not far off at all.
But...
A faint line appeared between Matsuda Jinpei’s brows. He, too, felt a shock he could hardly put into words.
If everything just now had been deduction, that was almost unbelievable. But if it had been fortune-telling? Matsuda Jinpei would rather believe it was deduction.
There was a third option, of course—that Yuki Mu had already investigated these people beforehand and learned their backgrounds, and had only happened to speak up because the case had now broken out.
But whether from the standpoint of logic, or from Matsuda Jinpei’s understanding of Yuki Mu’s temperament over the past two days, that third option was impossible no matter how one looked at it.
Bruce, who had quietly made his own presence less noticeable, also fell into thought, a contemplative light flickering through his captivating blue eyes.
...Children, adults, even ordinary civilians all seemed to be hiding astonishing depths.
For some reason, it gave him a strange sense of familiarity, not unlike Gotham.
Kudo Shinichi hurried over to his mother, Kudo Yukiko, and whispered something to her. Then he took a clean packet of tissues and carefully offered it to Miss Tanimura.
Murder was indeed an unforgivable crime, but that did not stop him from emotionally wanting to hand this woman a packet of tissues to wipe her tears.
Tanimura Rie’s friend, Karasawa Riko—the woman standing on the left—was nearly voiceless.
“...Rie!”
She fumbled in a panic, pulling out several tissues. Even the hand she used to wipe her friend’s tears was shaking uncontrollably.
“How could you be so foolish... This scumbag, this scumbag wasn’t worth you doing this for...”
At that moment, Inspector Megure and several other officers finally came hurrying in. The moment they stepped through the door, they were greeted by the restaurant’s highly unusual atmosphere.
“...?”
He looked at the neglected corpse lying on the floor, then at the two women clinging to each other and crying, and then at three familiar faces...?
“Hagiwara, Matsuda, Yuki? Why are all of you here?” He waddled over, his round belly swaying twice as he moved. “What exactly is going on here?”
Yet another unprecedented scene had been added to his career in responding to incidents.
Why did it feel as though this little brother Yuki always appeared in the strangest of situations...?
Hagiwara Kenji came back to himself, coughed lightly, and made a very obvious glance in Yuki Mu’s direction. “You’ll have to ask Yuki about that.”
“Yuki, are you certain about what you just said?”
“Mm,” Yuki Mu replied.
The moment he had finished his last sentence, he had immediately switched off the 【Eye of the City】 skill card.
...The effect of the skill card was indeed monstrous, perfectly matching its description, but the side effects were just as severe.
Even with beginner protection still in effect, the discomfort had been obvious.
A faint burning sensation spread through his stomach, and his body was filled with a subtle, hard-to-describe wrongness.
But that did not matter.
—The gains were proportional to the cost.
Yuki Mu looked at the steady stream of 【Reputation Value Increased】 messages popping up and felt very satisfied with the result this time.
Let anyone else try doing something like this if they could, he thought with restrained pride.
System: 【Character [Beika] Recognition Level has risen to 25%.
Because character [Beika] is bound to [Hawaii], the required value for unlocking a new character card—which would originally require the previous card’s Recognition Level to reach 50%—has been halved. 25% has been reached.】
System: 【Would you like to deploy character [Hawaii]?】
Yuki Mu: 【Yes.】
System: 【Deploying...
Deployment complete. Deployed within 100 meters of [Beika].】
Yuki Mu’s brow twitched.
By then, the officers who had arrived with Inspector Megure had already begun orderly evacuating the unrelated bystanders and collecting evidence at the scene. Two officers were questioning the three companions over by the table.
At the side, Hagiwara Kenji gave a quick, concise explanation of what had happened. The expression on Inspector Megure’s face shifted several times as he listened, until at last it settled into a long sigh.
“...I see. In that case, we’ll have to investigate the dark forces behind the victim as well.”
“Yuki—Mr. Yuki.”
Just as she was about to be taken away, Tanimura Rie’s emotions suddenly broke down again. She looked toward the young man whose expression had never changed even once.
“...So in the end, it still came to this.”
Tears began spilling out again. It was hard to tell whether she was speaking to Yuki Mu alone, or to all the officers present.
“If, back when I went to report it, I had met a police officer like you... would everything have been different...?”
It was a strange feeling. They had never met before. He had mercilessly exposed her. And yet he only needed to stand there and look at her with those beautiful green eyes for her to feel incomparable peace of mind.
It was like a child finding the parent who could finally stand up for her, even if he looked younger than she did.
After everything she had been through, she no longer cared.
Tanimura Rie stepped forward and clasped Yuki Mu’s hand tightly.
It was cold.
Yuki Mu did not pull away. He only lowered his eyes and let her hold it.
The Kudo family had not left yet. Watching the killer seize the young man’s hand as though she had found salvation, Shinichi felt strangely uncomfortable. In the end, he could only vaguely explain it away to himself—
Even though Miss Tanimura said that, Mr. Yuki did not actually seem to be a police officer.
Click.
It was a very faint sound, but the pain that shot through his wrist was extremely clear.
Yuki Mu: “.............”
Wait. I am in the middle of maintaining my aura here??
Tanimura Rie also froze for a moment, then carefully let go. Her face turned deathly pale, and she looked even more panicked than someone facing the prison sentence awaiting the rest of her life.
“I-I didn’t mean to... I’m sorry...”
Seeing that the poor woman was about to burst into tears again from sheer panic, Yuki Mu could only force himself to keep his expression composed.
“It’s fine. This is not your fault.”
【System, explain?】 Yuki Mu stared at his hand, which had dislocated and seemed to have suffered a slight fracture as well. 【Side effect?】
System: 【......This is actually logical.】
The system explained with difficulty, 【To a certain extent, the side effect amplifies the body’s weaker areas. So it was not only your stomach, but also your bones.】
【Japan lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire, so earthquakes are frequent. When that is reflected onto the body condensed from the city consciousness, it manifests as osteoporosis...】 The system’s voice grew quieter and quieter. 【Because of [Hawaii], um, so only [Beika]’s body reflects that point.】
This time, however, Yuki Mu did not snap back at the system.
Because—
“How careless.”
His wrist was lifted by a touch so gentle it was almost tender.
“Yuki...?” Hagiwara Kenji had just been about to offer comfort while suppressing a laugh that did not quite fit the occasion, when his words were cut off rather forcefully.
The man who interrupted him was dressed in a dark brown suit, but the top button of his shirt was left undone. Together with his brown wolf-cut hair, it gave him the air of a suave gentleman with a faint touch of impropriety.
He looked somewhat mixed-race. His features were deep and striking, and the muscles hidden beneath his suit clearly carried terrifying explosive power, yet were not exaggerated. It was the kind of physique most people found irresistibly attractive.
The man—[Hawaii], Palmer Gary—wore a charming smile. Combined with those amber eyes that sent sparks flying indiscriminately at anyone they landed on, it created a strangely potent allure, thick with raw masculine magnetism.
“Sir, would you mind stepping aside?”
Hagiwara Kenji was edged aside in an oddly deliberate manner. A smile rose to his face as well, though it was visibly false.
“Sir, may I ask who you are...?”
When had this man come in? He had not noticed him at all.
“How careless of you,” the man said, ignoring the question. He crouched beside Yuki Mu and lifted the other man’s hand with polished courtesy.
He wore black leather gloves on both hands. Pressing those gloved fingers against the other man’s pale, slender hand, he gave one light push.
The joint slid neatly back into place.
Palmer looked Yuki Mu over from bottom to top. His eyes lingered on those bloodless lips and pale face, and he let out a low laugh whose meaning was hard to read.
“...How fragile.”
He hid the faint malice and pity in his eyes very well, though to Yuki Mu they could not have been more obvious.
“Drop that hypocritical act.” Yuki Mu’s face went cold. He pulled his hand free from Palmer’s grip, but just as he tried to move away, the man lightly caught it again from behind.
Careful not to put pressure on the injured hand, he answered Hagiwara Kenji’s earlier question with easy grace.
“Hello, Officer Hagiwara.”
“He should have mentioned me to you before, should he not? I’m the one who came to pick him up today.” Palmer paused for a moment, the smile on his face growing more and more charming. “—Call me Fick Naim.”
At the side, little Kudo Shinichi gave him a dead-eyed stare.
“......”
Fick Naim. Fake name.
The future little Edogawa Conan silently delivered his complaint.
—Could this guy possibly have been any more halfhearted with that alias???