Bungo Stray dogs : Dazai's Entrance Exam - Light Novel 1

Chapter 2

The eleventh.
I returned home in the dead of night, but here my pen falls silent.
I am not equipped with the ability to forget those memories, but nevertheless, I will not record them in this notebook.
I should overcome whatever hardship comes my way. I should laugh when fifty liters of mud are poured over my head.
Silence. Still, only silence.
I sat at my Agency desk reading the newspaper.
Ever since that morning, the news on the television and the internet had been in an uproar yelling over a certain sensational story.
"The victims of the Yokohama tourists repeated disappearances case have been found dead."
"Are their deaths the product of an arbitrary decision by a private investigator to break and enter a facility?"
And there were images. The white smoke, the agonized victims writhing in pain, and myself, grasping at the cage.
The newspapers had yet to report on it as well, but it was only a matter of time.
The agency's phone rang off the hook incessantly all morning. The calls were all complaints, but I supposed those would soon be interspersed with lawsuits from the grieving families. To make matters worse, we still did not know what became of the remaining seven victims.
Someone had photographed those poor souls dying of poison gas and released those photos to the public.
My desk phone rang and jarred me out of my thoughts. I reached for the receiver, but before I could grab it, Dazai picked it up and immediately put it down. The ringing died.
"This was our opponent's objective, I should think," Dazai chirped. He carried a photo. "But here's some comfort. You look very handsome in this photo, Kunikida."
Wordlessly, I took the photo from Dazai, but he quickly put up his hand and stopped me. "How about you go home for the day? You look terrible."
"... I can't go home. I have work to do."
"How conscientious of you. Why, when I – I, Dazai! – came to work today, two rocks were thrown at me."
I looked outside. A number of protestors had been yelling outside all morning. There will only be more tomorrow, I thought.
"Conscientious? You fool, I have extremely important business. I'm catching the culprit."
"Well... there is that," Dazai agreed, playing dumb.
"Where is Miss Sasaki?"
"She's on her way. Dr. Yosano's taking a look at her in her office right now, though she doesn't seem badly hurt."
"I have something to ask her."
I stood up. Miss Sasaki was the only living person to personally witness the culprit. She might have insight into the culprit's kidnapping technique.
As I rose to follow Dazai to the doctor's office, my eyes suddenly fell on the photograph. Miss Sasaki, the other victims, and I were all plainly visible, but the only sign of Dazai was the edge of his coat peeping past the frame.
How did he manage to hide from this candid photograph?

"Please forgive me... I wish I was strong, but I'm afraid I'm really very weak..."
Miss Sasaki listlessly hung her head as she sat in the doctor's office.
"My body is by nature quite weak, and I collapse upon occasion due to anemia. On the day in question, I already felt under the weather... so that is probably why I fainted."
That being the case, we knew nothing of the criminal's technique nor appearance. But –
"That must mean that someone kidnapped you while you were unconscious."
It would have been impossible to kidnap anyone in the middle of Yokohama Station due to the sheer number of people. Transporting an unconscious woman would have only been all the more conspicuous. Perhaps the culprit was a skilled repeated offender or knew some cunning trick-
"I really must thank you for... yesterday. I wouldn't even be here if you hadn't saved me when you did. And not only that, but you've been so hospitable and given me all sorts of help... for you see, I have no friends or family to stay with."
Miss Sasaki bowed her slender neck and fell silent. What with her naturally pale complexion, she put me in mind of a Western puppet with severed strings.
But she was no puppet, and it was her string of life that was severed. Some devilish murderer made an attempt on her life, and she knew not their identity, their motive, nor even if they still wished to lay claim to her life even now.
"Also, thank you for letting me stay with you last night... despite the horrible bother I'm sure I was."
... Hmm?
"Stayed with you? Stayed with you where?"
"At my place," Dazai casually remarked like it was nothing.
...
... And was that the closest place to keep her?
"Mr. Dazai... Thank you very much. And... thank you for... going so far out of your way to take care of me."
Why was Miss Sasaki red-faced and embarrassed?
"What's wrong, Kunikida? You're making a very odd face."
"Dazai, you cur... you're pretty fast with the ladies, aren't you?"
"No, you have the wrong idea," Miss Sasaki cried. "I asked him, not the other way around. It... was definitely me."
"Why, no, it was my pleasure. Any gentleman would. Besides, it was only natural – I would have said yes from the very moment we met," Dazai responded with a grin.
...
I did not approve of superficial love affairs. I believed men and women should modestly respect one another in their relations.
Therefore, I always thought one should not condone (and rather denounce instead) the casual one-night affairs, the intimacy born purely of feelings, and the fleeting couplings sparked without planning.
Therefore, therefore, therefore. Therefore I was not jealous in the slightest of men like Dazai who could "get some". I was not angry either.
I wasn't anything close to jealous.

"What a tragic, lovely lady she is," Dazai said with a smile as, having returned from the doctor's office, we prepared to head off to investigate.
"Is she your type of woman?"
"All women are my type. Every woman is the source of the sacred mystery of life, you see. But yes, I'd really love it if Miss Sasaki would commit a lover's suicide with me."
"You would marry even a locust."
I thought the relationship between a man and a woman should be noble and strong. The relationship should be that of partners who complete one another and marry for life – that was my ideal.
Truthfully, I had even written that in my notebook.
"What about you, Kunikida? What do you think about Sasaki?"
"She is a case witness. That's all."
"Oh, ye of little imagination... but what kind of lady is your ideal woman?"
"Read this."
I opened my notebook to the "Spouse" page and showed it to him. It contained all my plans on this particular topic.
"This is long! All of it?!"
As Dazai read the page, his expression froze.
"... Whoa. Man, oh man, oh man. This is you, all right... Oh, wow."
"Why are you reacting like that? Is this weird?"
"No, I think it's fine. These are all points every man could agree with..."
"Yes, aren't they? What's wrong with searching for an ideal woman?"
"I agree, I entirely agree, Kunikida. But if I may say one thing – please never, I mean ever, show this page to a woman. She will recoil from you. Even I am only just holding back from yelling, 'This person does not exist!'"
Really?
"All right, I get it all ready; let's get to work. We're looking for clues about the kidnapper. You didn't happen to notice anything, Dazai, did you?"
"I have one thing."
"What is it?"
"If you're looking for the ideal woman, then first things first, those glasses have got to go." Dazai quickly snatched my glasses and put them on himself. They did not suit him whatsoever.
"Enough of that already! Give those back!"
My glasses were fine as long as they didn't impede my work. No one would have cared had I changed them.
That being said, Dazai in glasses was really a comical sight. He somehow managed to look even more idiotic than normal.
"... Glasses?"
Glasses. The photos of the victims. Their faces. On the security footage. The hotels'-
"What's wrong, Kunikida?"
Those who disappeared all vanished after leaving their lodgings on foot. They all stayed in Yokohama alone. And they were all picked up on the hotel security footage.
"Let's go, Dazai." I took my glasses from him and put them back on. "I know who the criminal is."

The salt wind gusted through Yokohama harbor. Dazai and I stood at the water's edge near the river mouth.
The sun was already high in the sky, and the clouds formed a blue base through which white light broke through and showered down on us. But unlike the weather, the storm raged on in my heart.
A certain taxi I recognized pulled up to a stop in front of us.
"Why, if it isn't Investigator Kunikida! Now, now, please do get in," its likewise familiar driver said, ushering us in. We quickly climbed in.
"Sorry for calling you on such short notice."
"Think nothing of it; if you say it's a serious matter, Investigator Kunikida, then I would gladly drive you through hell or high water! Now, do tell me where we're bound today and we will be off at once. I'll be sure to take no detours; why, I'll even blow past the speed limit for you!"
"Heed the speed limit. Actually, we've discovered the criminal responsible for the repeated disappearances of the Yokohama tourists case we discussed earlier."
"What! Did you know, I took a look at the report on that abandoned hospital as well? What a terrible shame those poor souls did not make it... yes, let us be off to catch that criminal! We must act with haste lest they get away – so, please, tell me where they are. Do please tell me where those dreadful kidnappings occurred!"
"Right here."
"Huh?"
"You are the criminal responsible. And the kidnappings occurred here, in this very taxi." 
"Wha... What do you mean? I- I don't understand."
"I considered the matter. Who in this city could kidnap people one-by-one without being noticed? And where in Yokohama would the victim take no precautions while being alone in a room with only one other stranger? The answer is right here. You forced them to inhale sleeping gas and abducted them once they fainted. You were immune to the gas because you wore a mask."
"No... no, no, no, please wait a moment. I had heard that the victims vanished after walking away on foot and that there was no evidence of them boarding any vehicles nor record of them entering buildings. Is there any evidence to suggest that all the victims rode in this taxi? A record of a telephone conversation, or a testimony of someone at the pickup location?"
"Indeed. It is unmistakable that each and every victim rode in this very taxi. Still, no matter how many times the city police investigated the matter, evidence failed to turn up. This is because the kidnapping did not occur on the day they believed it did. The day the victims rode in your taxi is not the same day they disappeared."
"What... do you mean by that?"
"Now, now, Kunikida," Dazai interrupted. "We'll be here all day if you keep answering his questions one-by-one. Let me explain how everything went down.
"Mr. Driver, as you go about your daily business, you look for a specific type of customer. Your criteria are simple. One, they must have come to Yokohama alone and are looking to go to a hotel. Two, a portion of their face must be obscured by glasses, a hat, or sunglasses. Third, they must be of similar height to you. – You're a small man, so that criterion applies to women as well. It is in this way that you are able to erase your relationship with the victim and thus throw the investigation off its course."
"What in the world... are you talking about?"
"Now, please wait until I'm done before raising your objections. You are a taxi driver who spends much of your time cruising about this area. This is only a rough estimate, but I assume you find someone fitting those criteria every couple of days. When you find someone that makes you say, "There!", well, then it's just as Kunikida said; you fill the car with nerve gas. Then you drive to a hiding house, confine the victim there, and steal their clothes and belongings. That's why everyone at the abandoned hospital was in their underclothes, right? Now then, it's time for your trick."
Dazai clapped his hands in apparent delight before continuing.
"You wear the victim's clothing and transform yourself into the victim. Just like you mentioned last night, transformations are possible with facial makeup and cheek or body padding. Of course, you're likely well-practiced, and on top of that, I assume you only choose those you are confident you can ape convincingly. At any rate, your goal is not to fool anyone else so much as to hoodwink a security camera. You go to the hotel the victim has planned to stay at and deliberately make yourself seen on the security footage."
I remembered the footage from the investigation. Now that I thought about it, of the eleven victims, six wore glasses, and two more wore sunglasses for a total of eight- that fraction was too high to not be deliberate. The remaining three wore hats or had hair long enough to obscure all but a part of their face on the cameras. This simple disguise was the result of carefully chosen victims.
"The next part is simple, isn't it? You drop off the victim's luggage in their hotel room and brazenly leave the next day. Therefore the person who gets picked up on the security footage, the person who checks in, and the person who leaves are all the one and the same, so the police persist in tracking your steps only after you leave the hotel. Of course, there's no way they can find you, can they? You know Yokohama like the back of your hand, so you know where to go to avoid being spotted and where to run without security cameras catching you. The police can look until they're blue in the face, but all they will find is that the victim voluntarily chose to vanish without a trace."
"Sir, don't be outrageous. This – theory you've cooked up is no more than a hypothesis without evidence – yes, you have no evidence."
"I wonder, do I? It's possible that you're Miss Sasaki's kidnapper as well."
I took over for Dazai at this point and continued the explanation.
"That Miss Sasaki fainted at the station made abducting her quite simple – what an unexpected piece of luck for you. Normally, in an emergency like someone fainting, a nearby bystander calls an ambulance. But it does take time for the ambulance to rush over from the hospital. However, she fainted at the station where taxis are always on standby, ready to leave immediately. In the interest of time, it was decided she should ride in a taxi of some good Samaritan who just so happened to be on hand. And then you quite brazenly drove off with her. You said you would take her to the hospital, and that was exactly what you did- the only difference was in the hospital you took her to."
"... I ..." the driver began as if he wanted to say something, but nothing else came out. His expression became unreadable.
I ran my eyes over the car's interior upholstery. I found a white particle almost imperceptibly clinging to a crack and held it up, pinched between my fingers.
"If you are going to turn yourself in to the authorities, you had better do it soon. Evidence will turn up sooner or later. For example, here in this very car... I supposed you cleaned it after committing the crimes, but there are still residual traces of the gas left over. Once I pass them over to analysis, we'd know their chemical makeup immediately."
The driver forced out, as if the answer was wrung out of him, "I... have no memory of this. Perhaps a customer of mine left that there. That is entirely plausible as well. You can't possibly count that as evidence."
But this reply also served as his confession.
"Even without evidence, the culprit could be no one else but you."
I continued to explain my argument. "The method Dazai outlined just now only applies to those who rode in your taxi. You said you drove two of the victims, which is tantamount to confessing to driving the other nine."
"Inspector Kunikida. That is not physical evidence." The driver refused to meet my eyes as he talked. "Everything you have said is circumstantial evidence. You have found no deadly weapons in my home, nor have you any images depicting me in the moment of the crime. Even if you were to indict me, I could not possibly be found guilty."
Now it was my turn to fall silent.
He was entirely correct. I would have needed some sort of physical proof linking the victims and the driver – blood stains, finger prints, video footage, a confession with no plausible deniability- in order to land him a guilty verdict. What we had so far did not qualify as hard evidence. The case as it currently stood was likely to be thrown out altogether. Judging by the driver's words, all proof had likely already been thoroughly destroyed.
The man was more cunning than I had anticipated. What was I to do-?
But his next words were entirely unlike anything I could have expected.
"Inspector Kunikida... let us make a deal with one another. If you accept my conditions, I will turn myself over to the authorities."
"What?"
"My conditions are as such that the Armed Detective Agency will serve as bodyguards to me and guarantee my security. You would provide witness protection for seventy-two hours once the prosecutor's investigation concludes."
"A witness protection deal? What for?"
"I have... no more time. I will be killed. They will kill me."
"Wait. I don't follow. Start over from the beginning. Who is, and why are they, targeting you?"
"I didn't do business with them... I sold organs on the black market without any backing, so now I've made them mad! I'm doomed... I'm doomed, I tell you, and even my buyers won't contact me anymore. They've abandoned me! I don't know why... they weren't supposed to find out... but they're already on my tail."
"Now I understand," Dazai said, nodding with one hand slotted against his chin.
"Hey, Dazai, what the devil is he talking about? What is he saying?"
"See, it's like this. He was selling the victims' bodies to an illegal organ trade syndicate. But he flooded the market in a single month, so the price on organs collapsed. Let's suppose that a large enterprise holds a fine control over the supply of some product, but a single individual suddenly drops that market on its head. What do you think would happen next?"
"The enterprise would – be enraged?"
"A legitimate business would view it as healthy competition. But blood and violence are the currency for black-market companies which feed upon the local populace. And they grow mad when someone encroaches upon their territory-"
At that exact instant, something slammed into the car.
Or rather, several things struck the car repeatedly. A shrill sound rang out.
The right side of the taxi shuddered. The window shattering accompanied the sound of the bullets flying in.
"Gunshots! Get down!" I yelled. Shards of glass rained into the car, and it shuddered again as if it were pummeled by hammers.
"It's them! Oh god, help... I don't want to die!"
The driver opened his door and fled.
"Hey, wait!" I shouted after him, but it was already too late.
"Kunikida, we can't let the driver die or get away, not while we're so close to figuring out the truth! We need to catch him before the enemy does," Dazai, lying prone on the floor of the car, yelled up. Even though I had told him nothing, he understood immediately. We were in a fix! "I'll go after the driver, so you need to face the group!"
"Wait, fighting alone is dangerous! Dazai!"
Dazai fled, deaf to my plea. But I couldn't make a rookie take on his first gun fight alone, and we really had no other alternatives but to split up. So be it, I thought.
Cursing, I sized up my assailants. There were three of them, clad in black clothing and black glasses, armed with foreign, contraband sub-machine guns. That, coupled with their merciless attitudes, high degree of skill, and their ability to turn this street into the scene of a shootout in an instant made me realize-
"Shit, this is bad! It's the Port Mafia!"
The Port Mafia was a criminal organization headquartered near the Yokohama harbor. It was the cruelest, least merciful of all the local criminal organizations; its boss's orders became absolute laws of steel used to pulverize their enemies. They were by far the most evil group in Yokohama.
And I faced an armed force of three of them. Wasting time there spelled certain death for me.
"Doppo Poet – stun grenade!"
I scribbled the word onto a notebook page, tore it out, and focused my attention on it. The paper undulated and transformed into a fist-sized explosive projectile.
I aimed the grenade at the Mafia members and tossed it out the broken window.
It exploded near the enemy and produced such a flash and a thunderous roar that I feared anyone ill nearby should surely have suffered a heart attack. The Mafia members crouched and clutched their heads, seemingly unable to offer the slightest bit of retaliation.
At that moment, I leapt from the car and charged at them. I dropped the nearest person's neck to their elbow and slammed them to the ground; I sent the next person flying with a high-kick.
The last person swung the barrel of their gun at me. I twisted my torso and avoided it.
Their attack left them off-balance, so I grabbed their wrist and twisted it. I yanked it forward while wrenching it laterally and threw him in shihou nage.
The Mafia man flew through the air, hit the ground head-first, and immediately fell unconscious.
"Thank God."
I checked that they were all unconscious and walked back to the taxi.
Now, if only Dazai were as successful in his efforts as I...
Suddenly, I felt a great evil behind me.
I quickly leaped to the side before looking back. A torrent of darkness crashed through the space I had just occupied.
The torrent smashed into the car and sliced it in half.
The car body was cut in two, and axles and screws poured from the cross section, sprinkling on the ground and flying through the air. There was no time to be surprised. I dodged, and dodged again, as a nearby sign and a railing were cut to pieces.
Half-turning from the ground, I saw in the distance a small young man wrapped in a black overcoat coughing away.
He was the source of the evil I felt.
He coughed once more and began, "What splendid skill you have to best these three in a single instant. But next you will face my Rashoumon."
The young man carried no weapons nor assumed any fighting stances, but nevertheless advanced towards me with occasional coughing fits. The man gave off a horrible aura, a gale of fury and mad dog malice.
A short man in a black, Western-style greatcoat. An ability like a black maelstrom. The hell hound of the Port Mafia.
"You're – Ryuunosuke Akutagawa!"
"That I am. I have come on my boss's orders to remove the head of a man foolish enough to believe he could infringe upon our territory. Where is he?"
"He is not here. He turned tail and ran the moment he saw you."
I pointed in the direction the taxi driver had fled to, keeping my eyes trained on Akutagawa all the while. I dared not look away for even a second.
The vilest of all these vile fiends had arrived. Even the toughest criminals cried and ran when they heard the name "Akutagawa".
The black-fanged hellhound. The ability user of destruction and disaster. The harbinger of tragedy and despair. There was not enough time in the world to enumerate all the dark pseudonyms Akutagawa wore.
Although it was my first time encountering him, the matter of his slicing the taxi in two proved him to me even more dangerous than from hearsay. What could I do?
Simple. Akutagawa was focused on the kidnapper, not me. It would not be logical for me to put my life on the line to protect a kidnapper against such a dangerous foe as him. My best course of action was to point him in the right direction.
"That man is a witness. I cannot let him be killed until we determine the location of the remaining kidnapping victims. If you want to go after him, you'll have to defeat me first."
"Risking your life for a murderer? How foolish of you."
Shit. What an utter fool I had almost been.
A man of the Armed Detective Agency did not allow case witnesses to be slaughtered by criminals.
"Do as one should." Those words were emblazoned on my notebook.
Akutagawa's overcoat rippled. It looked as if it were composed of a thousand vengeful spirits temporarily condensed together. It ceased to be a thing of cloth and took on the shape of a thing of blades and sharp fangs.
"Meet me in battle, oh Port Mafia hound, Ryuunosuke Akutagawa."
"Come, man of the Armed Detective Agency, Doppo Kunikida. To battle."
An explosion of black blades radiated away from the man and surged forward in a sudden deluge.
I leapt to the side. A number of the blades tore at my clothes, and the rest bored countless holes into the wall behind me.
The blades wheeled around for another attack, and I quickly scratched a word into my notebook and tore its page out.
The page rippled in the air and transformed into a wire gun. I squeezed the trigger and shot the hook.
But the metal wire was stopped and repelled by an invisible barrier just before it hit Akutagawa.
"What the...?!"
The man did not appear to make any move to defend himself. Was this a part of his ability as well?
Before I could fully wind in the wire, a portion of Akutagawa's overcoat transformed into the head of a starving beast. The beast howled, and its head surged forward. It was fast!
I leapt to the side once more, but a fang tore into my right shoulder. Blood spurted from my wound. But I had no time to stop the bleeding. I dodged the beast's next attack, this one coming from behind me. I had no time to counterattack or even close the distance!
"Are you only going to run away, Agency man? How tiresome," Akutagawa spat, standing fully upright and motionless as I leapt about.
A cold sweat trickled down my cheeks. He was strong.
If I had hoped to hit him, I would have to come within a few meters of those lethal blades of darkness, but he had me so I could do nothing but dodge. He could also easily repel any projectiles. And just my luck, even if my aim was true, there was the issue of that mysterious barrier. The man had no weak points.
I continued to dodge the blades' incoming attacks, but I felt an inexplicable chill run up my body the moment I landed on the road.
Black blades pierced and sprouted up through the pavement like spears.
While my attention had been focused on the aerial ones, other blades had drilled underground!
I tried to jump again, but my weight pulled me to the floor. I was too late!
A blade stabbed my torso and passed through the other side at my back.
"Gah...!" Intense pain clouded my vision.
I couldn't bear it. I fell to my knees. I knew I was done for the moment I stopped moving, but there was nothing I could do.
Rashoumon's black cloth wound itself about my neck. My feet left the ground as it lifted me. The cloth wrapped itself into a serpent's diamond shaped head and violently slammed me into a nearby wall.
"What a trifle you are. You're merely a detective as a day job, I presume? At this rate, I might as well wring your neck."
The black cloth constricted, and my world was dyed red.
"I won't... let anyone... interfere with... our work!"
As the cloth constricted even tighter about my neck, I fired the wire gun still clenched in my right hand. But my target was not Akutagawa this time.
The wire sailed past Akutagawa and struck the water pipe running down the side of the building. The pipe erupted.
"What the...?"
Akutagawa raised his arm to shield himself from the water, but the high pressure stream doused him and the road alike.
"You fool. Do you suppose I will flinch at a little splash from a puddle?"
I tore another page out of my notebook with my other hand. When I had written for the wire gun earlier, I had also written something else on a second sheet of paper.
"Doppo Poet- stun gun!"
The paper instantly transformed into a portable high-voltage stun gun. I snapped the power on and fired at the puddling water.
Flash! Stars sparked across the ground.
"Nnnnnnnuuuuaaaaghhh?!"
The water acted as a conductor, emitting beams of purple and white light.
The purple lightning, coiling and undulating like snakes, surged through Akutagawa's drenched body.
A second sun, this one a purple twin to its brother in the sky, illuminated the road, split open with a pop of steam, and gradually disappeared.
The cloth of Rashoumon about my neck loosened, and I fell to the road. I pressed on my aching neck and side while watching Akutagawa.
He squatted on the ground. White smoke and steam rose from his entire body.
"Gh... Gwa ha ha!" Akutagawa cackled, shoulder shaking, even in the midst of coughing. Could he even move after the electricity?
"I see today that the Agency is no mere collection of jesters. Splendid. Truly, splendid indeed."
"...If you intend to fight, then fight me once more. My notebook has pages to spare for you."
I lifted my arms once more and swung the wire gun around to him once more.
"By all means, I should like to test if you have the ability to destroy me... but unfortunately, it appears we have an unwelcome guest."
I followed Akutagawa's line of sight and saw a patrol car pulling up, its siren screaming. I supposed the police had caught wind of our gun fight.
"I must flee before it is this criminal they catch. Come, let us be done for now. We will continue this soon."
He turned, still coughing all the while, and left. He was as relaxed as if he were merely returning home from a walk, not a battle. For this man, it seemed there was hardly a large difference between fighting or fleeing.
"I do not relish the prospect of meeting him again..."
I fell to my knees as I watched his retreating back.
That was Akutagawa of the Port Mafia. The rumors told no lies, no - he was more of a hellhound than the rumors did him justice for. I had no desire for a rematch.
All I wanted was to go home and sleep like the dead.
That being said, I had much to do before sleep, so I took a short moment to catch my breath and then set off for work once more. I needed to make a detailed report of this encounter. I received first-aid for my stomach wound in the Agency's infirmary and then returned to the office, whereupon I found Dazai sipping a cup of tea and a pleased expression which told me he had finished his first job.
"Dazai. I presume you caught the cab driver."
"Of course I did. I restrained him immediately and then handed him off to the police. He seemed happy about it; after all, Port Mafia assassins can't reach him under police protection."
What a relief. So it seemed Dazai wasn't as much of an incapable idiot as he first appeared.
I doubted that Dazai ran away because he anticipated the Mafia attack, but his convenient pretext for leaving and the clean resolution of the case filled me with needless anxiety.
"So the taxi driver was the culprit behind this string of cases, huh? Is that the plot of this act?"
There was no reward for working ourselves to the bones and dashing all over the place. The police would give us a small acknowledgement or thank-you gift, and that would be the end of it all. Goodness.
"You don't need to bother about going out any more today. Once we finish our routine duties, let's go grab a drink."
"Are you paying?" Dazai asked, suddenly all smiles.
"Shouldn't you be the one trying to impress me here? But fine, I'll pay for you now, so you need to take your work seriously tomorrow."
I returned to my desk and dealt with my remaining business.
The work phone rang somewhere as I looked over the documents passed over to me. I wrote up the case for this report.
I happened to glance over at my computer and saw that we received an email. Not particularly concerned, I skimmed its contents. As soon as I finished reading, I started over and read it properly.
I began to call, "Dazai," and then realized I had stopped breathing. "Drinking is cancelled. We have a job to do."
"Aww, what? I'm so ready to go I have a sake-shaped hole in my stomach already."
"A request came in. It's from the same anonymous person who asked out to scope out that ruin."
My throat felt dry. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I didn't want to say the next words.
"The job is to deactivate a bomb. If we don't find it and deactivate it by sunset tomorrow, over a hundred people will die."

Word count: 5,809