Beastars: The Discover Check

Chapter 153: Final Fall

Legoshi stepped from the cab, phone clutched in his hand. Louis had texted him to meet him at the theater. He said it was urgent. He requested that Legoshi do his best to make sure the police didn't follow him. Which he did. He took a cab to a corner drug store, another one to a mall, where he walked through and quickly hailed a cab on the other side, which he took to his noodle shop where he had called yet another cab to take him to the theater. He looked around and made sure no one was looking directly at him. He smelled for any of the familiar cop scents he remembered from when they interrogated him. Nothing. It seemed to have worked. He walked across the street towards the theater, past an ice truck parked on the theater's side of the four-laned intersection. On the other side he looked down at the message again, just as the phone buzzed with Louis' number. He quickly hit the answer button.

"Louis?"

"Legoshi," Louis greeted. There was a sadness in his voice that resonated from deep in his chest. So much so that it was weak upon exiting his throat.

"You okay?" the wolf asked, trying the locked doors of the theater.

"Turn around and walk back the way you came," Louis demanded, desperate in his tone.

"No," Legoshi refused. "I'm coming in."

"Just do as I ask," Louis said. "That's a command."

Legoshi really wished he hadn't said that. He could tell his friend was in pain, and he wanted to help him, but his canine genes kicked in at the word command. And he painfully turned around and walked back the way he had come from.

"Louis?" he asked, in his own questioning tone directed towards his friend's attitude.

He crossed the street and began walking down the sidewalk to where the cab had dropped him off.

"Stop there," Louis shouted. Legoshi heard it in the phone ear and in his other ear as well. He froze and looked in the direction he had heard Louis' voice.

"Look up," the deer said. "I'm on the roof."

Legoshi raised his eyes to the roof where he saw Louis, standing with his coat flowing in the breeze up where he was. Even from this far away, Legoshi could tell he looked saddened. Shoulders were hunched, back bent forward in a slouch. He was putting most of his weight on his prosthetic, and he looked defeated. Legohsi did a double take and stepped back a bit when he realized that Louis was also standing on the ledge of the roof, phone held up to his head.

"Oh god," Legoshi gasped in shock.

There was phone silence for a good minute as the two just stared at each other.

"I um," the deer started. "I can't come down so...we'll have to do it like this."

"What's going on?" Legoshi asked, because he didn't want to believe that what he was seeing was real.

"An apology," Louis answered.

The wolf heard a slight tongue click on the other side of the call.

"It's all true," he said plainly.

"W-What?" Legohsi stammered immediately after, still staring up dumbfounded to his friend.

"Everything they said about me," the herbivore clarified.

Legoshi stood there, waiting for more clarification. The deer shifted on the roof and Legoshi's heart quickened, afraid he would fall.

"It's all true," he said. "I invented all the criminals in The Drusk. I paid them off large sums of my money to help me play the elaborate role of Adler. I created Halsenberg, I created the small criminal gangs, I invented...Razor. Both Shoon and Shoji. I killed Shoon, having lost myself in the role, and kept Shoji playing the part, blackmailing him until he eventually snapped. It's all my fault those people are dead."