Black Bullet - Volume 5 - Chapter 1.07

7

“Well, I guess luck’s not been on your side lately, huh, Rentaro?”

Sumire Muroto sat on one side of the reinforced-glass barrier, picking at her hair distractedly as she griped at the prisoner on the other side.

“I swear, every time I get involved with you, I wind up being forced out of the basement over and over again. I hate it. I had to expose myself to the sun at full blast on the way here. I thought I was gonna turn into a pile of ashes, ha-ha-ha.”

Even by Sumire standards, the laugh sounded terribly contrived.

“They wearing you out in there?”

Rentaro gave her a shrug. “I’m doing pretty good, actually. Three hots and a cot, and all that. Plus, I can nap all I want.”

Sumire looked surprised for a moment, then curled her lips upward. “That’s the spirit, my boy,” she said. “If you could keep your spirits up long enough to escape, that’d save me a lot of trouble.”

A cough emanated from behind Rentaro as the prison guard chose that moment to make his presence known. Sumire replied with a calm shrug.

The two of them were in the visitation room. A week had passed since Rentaro was placed under custody.

“Y’know, I figured if you ever got yourself arrested, it’d be once you finally succumbed to your raging hormones and started licking little girls’ rear ends in the park. But murder, though, huh? For better or for worse, you’ve really surpassed my expectations.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“They must’ve let you talk to an attorney by now. How’s that going?”

“It’s going nowhere. I’m a shoo-in to get prosecuted, and he said I don’t stand much chance of winning.”

“Must’ve been a shock, huh?”

“Not really,” Rentaro lied. Somewhere in his heart, he still believed in himself. He didn’t kill anyone, so someone would understand soon enough. Justice would be served. But it turned out that he didn’t need much time for that hope to transform itself into hopelessness. There were the intense interrogation sessions, the extension of his custody period, the cuffs and belly chain they made him move around in like a hardened criminal, the being forced by detectives and assistant prosecutors to recite what he did on that evening dozens of times. His miserable pleas of “I didn’t do it” were cut off by apathetic inquisitors telling him to “just answer the questions you’re asked,” shouting down the voice of innocence.

The idea that some assassin group rubbed Suibara out was greeted with open derision. On more than one occasion, the desperation made him want to confess to everything and put the matter to rest finally.

“I bet we could improve your chances if I represented you in court, but I guess I’d need to go through all this stupid paperwork and licensing and so on first.”

“Uh, you’re a doctor.”

“Nothing in the law books saying a doctor can’t be a lawyer, is there?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Besides, I’ve read all the statutes already. All of them. Pretty heady reading. It took me thirty whole minutes to memorize them all.”

“What did you think of it?”

“It’s a remarkable guide to all the greedy desires of mankind. There’s a lot of them. And by the way,” Sumire said as she looked at Rentaro’s chest, “I heard that Enju’s been paying you regular visits.”

She was staring at a poorly made patchwork rabbit sewn into the loose hoodie he was wearing. He touched it, noting the quilted fabric. A gift from Enju.

The school uniform he had on during his arrest was confiscated from him—he could’ve hung himself with the belt, or swallowed the buttons on it to die of suffocation or blockage or something. He really should’ve had his cybernetic limbs taken from him, too, but the artificial skin covering them meant he didn’t have to worry about that unless he blabbed about it.

Enju had been his only other visitor. Neither Tina nor Kisara showed their face once.

“How’s Tina doing, Doctor?”

Sumire shook her head. “She hasn’t gotten back from the police yet.”

Tina was detained not long after Rentaro’s arrest. Just as Sumire feared, Tina was the only person they could find capable of shooting a target traveling on a 200-kilometer-per-hour train. According to Enju, she wasn’t charged with anything, but the police hauled her in as a material witness and she hadn’t been sighted at the office since. Her inability to provide an alibi for the day of the murder was another black mark on her credibility.

“If this keeps up, they’ll probably make you out to be the mastermind behind Giichi Ebihara’s murder, with Tina serving as your hit man.”

“That’s insane!”

As Rentaro spat out the words, Sumire, distracted, leaned over and calmly placed her elbows on the table in front of her, putting her chin on her crossed arms.

“It is. It’s really insane. But whenever something absurd and nonsensical happens, they always try to rationalize it as much as possible. You were at the scene of the crime, and you were standing there with the murder weapon in your hand. Meanwhile, a sniper killed their target under next-to-impossible conditions, and they can only find one person realistically capable of doing that. Only the scales of justice know what the verdict will be, and all that, but it’s pretty easy for me to imagine the jurors’ faces listening to that story.”

“……”

“But enough good news, huh? Lemme give you the bad news. Once you’re found guilty in a court of law, the regulations say that your civsec license’s gonna be revoked. I guess they don’t want convicted felons carrying those licenses around. Who knew, huh? But the worst part of that is, once you’re stripped of your right to perform civsec duties, Enju’s gonna be turned over to the IISO—the International Initiator Supervision Organization.”

“They’re…?”

“You’re allowed to live with a ten-year-old girl you’re not related to because your civsec license gives you that right. If you lose that, Enju’s gonna be put in a pretty rough situation.”

“She can just retire from the Initiator business, then.”

She should have the right, Rentaro reasoned. Initiators in Tokyo Area were fielded from a pool of volunteers and scouts. But Sumire shook her head. “I don’t think that’s gonna work. If Enju quits that gig, her supply of anti-corrosion drugs from the IISO will dry right up. In her current state, that’s gonna be fatal.”

“Shiiiiit.” Rentaro slammed his fist against the table. “We’re all screwed, aren’t we?”

The prison guard rolled his eyes at them as Sumire stood up.

“Well, just think about it, all right, Rentaro? It’s do-or-die time.”

Then she left the room.

What should I do? Rentaro internally asked himself. But no clear answer came to mind. As long as he was locked in here, it wouldn’t be easy for him to do much of anything. His last hope was that they’d decline to prosecute due to lack of evidence.

Calming his frayed nerves, Rentaro put his hands against each other, as if in prayer. I won’t get prosecuted. I mean, I didn’t kill anyone. Even after the guard motioned him to stand up, he stayed right in place, silent.

Two days later, Rentaro Satomi was officially indicted by the assistant prosecutor and went from being a suspect to the accused.