Unlike the future Whiskey trio, who were all busy having their own private mental storms, over by the abandoned construction site—
Screech—
Tires scraped against the asphalt, leaving behind neat streaks of rubber.
With a sharp click, the passenger-side door was the first to open from the inside. The young man who stepped out was tall and straight-backed, fine-featured as carved jade, with short dark green hair and calm eyes that held a faintly suppressed anger.
Yuki Mu: 【System. Can [Eye of the City] be activated only partially? We do not need such a large range right now, and [Beika]’s current body cannot handle it if the range is too wide.】
System: 【Let me see... No problem. It can be done.】
【Hidden Skill [Eye of the City] (Partial Version) activated ps. Side effects reduced to 50% of original effect】
The abandoned tools by the wall, the unfinished shell of the building on the site, the transparent structure of the high-rise interior, one large and three small life-signs on the top floor...
And also— an unstable improvised bomb that could explode at any moment.
“Tch.” A chill entered Yuki Mu’s expression.
So he had overlooked something.
[Beika]’s Recognition Level had not risen high enough yet, which meant that some of the city authority belonging to [Beika] had not been fully unlocked... or fully brought under control.
When he had solved the case in three minutes earlier, time had been too tight and his body had been too strained, so he had failed to notice that the storage room in this abandoned construction site actually contained raw materials and containers that could be used to assemble an improvised bomb.
Although that was also, in itself, a safety hazard that should not have existed after the site was abandoned, it had indeed created real trouble under the current circumstances.
“What is it, Yuki?” Matsuda Jinpei and the other officers had already gotten out of the police cars as well. He narrowed his eyes. “Is something wrong?”
On the short ride over, the officers had already verified the facts.
It was true: Ishibashi Mio was currently unreachable, and the surveillance footage showed the direction she had left in—the most likely destination was this construction site.
And besides Mizukami Mitsue, the other girl, Isshiki Yoshiko, and the boy, Kudo Shinichi, also could not be reached at the moment.
...
Every fact confirmed so far matched the conclusion Yuki Mu had delivered in those three minutes.
And on the way here, he had also given a rapid explanation of how he had arrived at those deductions—but although the police car had a live radio system, almost no one had been able to follow his thought process. Even Matsuda Jinpei had only understood fragments of it.
Yuki Mu: Since I already knew the answer in order to preserve the three-minute timing, the explanation was really just reverse-engineered afterward :D
When someone asked a second time, “How exactly did you deduce that Ishibashi Mio developed soccer-related trauma in childhood because of her stepfather?” the young Public Security officer seemed to think for a moment.
The police car sped forward, the scenery outside flying backward so quickly it was almost dizzying. In his even voice, there was the faintest trace of a sigh.
“I have a friend. One of his... children once said something.”
He hesitated very slightly over the word “children,” but smoothly continued at once, as though merely quoting someone else with detached calm.
“To infer such conclusions is as self-evident as 2+2=4 once one is familiar with the rules of calculation. By contrast, explaining the reasons is rather like explaining why 2+2=4... comparatively speaking, that is actually more difficult.”*
All the officers who heard it: “......”
For a moment, the communication channel fell utterly silent.
A... child?
What kind of child said something like that...?
Matsuda Jinpei grumbled inwardly as he took advantage of the fact that the two of them were in the same police car and pressed on without much restraint. “So how did you see it? For example, how did you figure out that Miss Ishibashi’s father used lines like, ‘Girls should marry, keep house, and raise children. They should not go out and show themselves off playing soccer’?”
By now, Matsuda Jinpei no longer really doubted the truth of Yuki Mu’s words—at least when it came to solving cases.
But the young Public Security officer did not seem to be in very good condition. Hearing Matsuda’s question, he merely leaned back slightly against the seat, half-closed his eyes, and coolly uttered two words.
“Fortune-telling.”
Matsuda Jinpei shrugged, and was not even surprised.
Still...
He turned his head slightly, his black eyes studying Yuki Mu’s current appearance.
Tch. This guy was not secretly in bad shape, was he? His face was as white as paper.
So Matsuda Jinpei quieted down and let him rest for the remainder of the drive.
...For some reason, he felt that if he disturbed Yuki Mu’s rest right now, a genuine sense of guilt would rise from the bottom of his heart!!
It was like your family’s exhausted adult had worked hard outside all day to support you, and then, after they came home utterly worn out, you—as the troublesome child—still kept making noise and refused to let them sleep for a while (?).
Matsuda Jinpei and Hagiwara Kenji, days earlier, found themselves feeling exactly the same thing.
This is so weird. Why is it this weird.jpg
How had their thoughts twisted in that direction?
Yuki Mu always looked down at everyone with cold eyes every single day... Theoretically, he should have been the sort of person who would make it very difficult for anyone to feel genuine closeness toward him.
Could it be that because he had saved Hagi’s life, Matsuda had unconsciously put a filter over him?
The system, meanwhile, stared at the notifications in the backend and said darkly: 【Why is Matsuda Jinpei just like Hagiwara Kenji back then... Why does he keep raising Recognition Level every other second?】
Yuki Mu was full of gratified delight. 【Ah, so that is why this pair of childhood friends really are good people to have around!】
He glanced at the backend again and mused: 【I am really looking forward to the Black Organization people getting involved now.】
System: 【Hm? You mean the ones drawn over by the [Hawaii] persona?】
...It did not even dare imagine what Blue Hawaii’s reputation inside the Black Organization would be from now on.
【Of course.】 Yuki Mu answered with perfect cheerfulness. 【They are undercover agents, after all. They are clever by nature, and they definitely think much more than ordinary people do... When they keep replacing their impressions of [Beika] and [Hawaii] in their heads, the Recognition Level rises absurdly fast.】
While they spoke, the line of police cars came in with a beautiful series of drifting turns and stopped one after another.
They had reached the abandoned construction site.
*
“Is something wrong?” Matsuda Jinpei’s question came again.
It was a day of harsh winds. The cold gusts howled across the abandoned site, and Yuki Mu’s indifferent voice came with them.
“Nothing much.”
“—Miss Ishibashi just happened to make an improvised bomb for herself, that is all.”
Matsuda Jinpei, who knew perfectly well how unstable bombs made crudely by amateurs could be: “...Huh?”
“They are on the top floor. Just send people straight up there... Miss Ishibashi will not harm those children, but you will need to be careful with the homemade bomb. I will wait below for you.”
After saying that, Yuki Mu himself fell silent for a moment, then slowly added, “...Forget it. I will go up with you, just in case something goes wrong.”
Matsuda Jinpei raised a brow. “Fine. But can your body handle it?”
There was concern in his gaze as he added, with blunt honesty, “You do not look well.”
“I’m fine,” Yuki Mu replied.
If anything happened to that little brat Shinichi, then Beika would be the one truly in trouble!!!
Better safe than sorry. In the end, the world now was not what it had once been—the former 【Protagonist Halo】 had already been greatly weakened.
So yes, accidents were entirely possible.
The cold wind lifted his hair. The young Public Security officer was the first to step forward instead. He wore a somewhat longer trench coat today, making his figure look even straighter and taller, and the hem of the coat swept sharply through the air in the wind.
“Let’s go.”
*
“Sensei... Ishibashi-sensei...”
Tears poured unstoppably from Mizukami Mitsue’s eyes.
She could not understand why the teacher who had always been so gentle and kind at school had suddenly become like this.
The time she had admired her teacher most had been when Ishibashi-sensei spoke about soccer, that faint light flowing in her eyes.
It had been so dazzling, shimmering with dreams and glory.
Not like this.
Now, the once-soft and graceful Ishibashi-sensei looked almost savage, speaking in a near-breakdown state of the destruction soccer had brought into her life.
“Mitsue... Yoshiko...”
She already seemed half-mad. Her trembling hand reached out as though to stroke Mizukami Mitsue’s face and wipe away her tears, but the moment her fingers touched the girl’s soft cheek, she jerked back as if shocked, then kicked away the sharp knife she had originally prepared.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry... Sensei did not want to hurt you. Sensei is a teacher... How could a teacher hurt her students...?”
Ishibashi Mio murmured to herself, “You are girls too. You can understand your teacher, can’t you? Girls should not play soccer. Girls should not go out and show themselves in public... Did you hear me? Do you remember? This is the last lesson I will teach you...”
Then, inch by inch, the woman’s face turned cold and silent, like ashes after the fire had burned out, every last scrap of strength and emotion consumed until only blank exhaustion remained.
She picked up the improvised bomb she had made and stared fixedly at her two girl students, speaking word by word.
“Never believe those two damned lies.”
“My life has already been ruined by him... but yours must not be.”
Kudo Shinichi had been gagged and tied up off to the side. From beginning to end, the woman had not given him a single glance.
“Mmph! Mmph mmph mmph!!!” He sensed at once what Ishibashi Mio was about to do and desperately tried to say something to stop her.
Do not do anything stupid... Ishibashi-sensei was always a kind person...!
But it was already too late.
That once approachable face now held a kind of resolve so painfully bright that it inexplicably made one want to cry. Yet still she did not spare Kudo Shinichi a single glance. Laughing wildly, she hugged the bomb she had made and leaped from the top floor of the abandoned building.
“Never bow to this damned fate! Always be yourself!”
BOOM—
The sound of the bomb exploding and the sound of the police finally reaching the top floor came almost together, impossible to tell which had come first.
“The children? Are the children all right?”
Kudo Shinichi only stared blankly in the direction the woman had fallen. The explosion had lasted only a brief instant, and yet in his mind it seemed to burst into a long chain of mournful cries, so overwhelming that he did not even feel the warmth of the officers’ hands as they untied him.
Not until a pair of cool hands covered his eyes.
A voice he recognized—the young man from the restaurant case—came to him, accompanied by light, uneven breaths and the wind circling and echoing high above.
“...This is not your fault. Do not look.”
The cold voice was the same as ever, though the ending note held the faintest hint of hesitant gentleness.
“You did very well.”
“Perhaps you like Holmes? I have a friend... London knows him.”
As though trying to comfort him, yet not knowing how, the young man only awkwardly brought up the object of the child’s admiration and devotion. His tone was stiff and uncertain.
“If you are really hurting that much, I could ask him to talk with you for a while... You might gain something from it.”