Black Bullet - Volume 6 - Chapter 4.05

5

Sometime before Rentaro thrust himself into battle…

The rain was coming down in buckets, but it still wasn’t enough to wash away the smell of alcohol that permeated the entire street.

The red and green streetlights cast their clouded illumination through the rain. He had bumped umbrellas, or nearly bumped them, with several staggering drunks on the walk. The touts attempting to lure him into nightclubs and bars, their tenacity going well beyond what city regulation allowed, were starting to irk him. If he had his policeman’s uniform on, that would have snapped all these intoxicated people out of their drunken stupor. As a plainclothes inspector, however, he wasn’t given the chance to unfold the old hat and blue pants all too often.

Holding the umbrella between his neck and shoulder, Shigetoku Tadashima unfurled a full-size road map—a rarity these days—and searched for his destination. Once he successfully spotted it, he turned his face up and took a look at the building across from him through the pounding rain.

“…This is it?”

He wasn’t entirely sure he was correct, but then he saw TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY in block lettering on the third floor.

What a pile this is, he couldn’t help but think. This man that people hailed as the savior of Tokyo Area, running an office in the shabby outskirts of town—someplace where even a strip club would hesitate to set up shop. He doubted the person he was looking for would be in at this time of night, but given that her home address turned up nothing, this was the only lead he had.

Folding up his umbrella and batting the handle against the ground to shake off water, he climbed up to the third floor. There was a frosted glass door, TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY stamped on the nearby wall panel. He rang the bell. Then he did it twice more. No response.

He was just about to turn back toward the stairwell when his eyes detected movement somewhere beyond the frosted glass. “Excuse me?” he called out, tapping on the door again. “I’m visiting from Magata Station.”

His patience was rewarded. After another moment or two, he heard a click, then was greeted by a young woman in black.

“Um, what time do you think it is right—?”

The banter cut off. A look of vague recognition emerged on the woman’s face.

“Inspector…Tadashima, right?”

Tadashima saluted in response. “I apologize for calling on you late at night,” he began, following standard procedure. “Would you mind if I took up a little bit of your time? I wanted to ask you about the Rentaro Satomi case.”

Kisara seemed to ponder this for a moment. Then she stepped back and opened the door fully, inviting him in. Taking a closer look, Tadashima realized she was in a black negligee. He must have woken her up after all. It was basic—no frills or lace or whatnot—but it wasn’t the kind of thing even a grown woman would wear around a stranger.

She didn’t seem to care, however, as she walked with an unsteady gait toward the kitchen. Her blank, glassy eyes had a dangerous fragility to them—just one touch seemed enough to make them shatter—but they also held a passive sort of beauty that didn’t resist one’s gaze. She is beautiful, Tadashima thought. He could understand why Rentaro got so passionate about her. But something bothered him.

He had run into her several times during investigations from the Hiruko terror attack forward, but the Kisara he remembered was always standing up to her full height, arms crossed and acting miffed about something or other. The haughty girl of his memory wasn’t the one who had just greeted him. He wondered if he’d misremembered something.

Then, in the dark room that smelled of mold, he noticed another thing that didn’t quite match the scene: a headless mannequin next to the office desk in a pure white wedding dress. A top-of-the-line one. The price could’ve easily broken ten million yen.

“I’m getting married.”

Startled, he turned around to find Kisara emerging from the kitchen with some teacups on a tray.

“…I apologize for asking, but how old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Ah… Well, no problem from a legal perspective, anyway. What are you going to do about school, though?”

“I’m dropping out,” came the flat, stiffened reply. Her half-averted eyes were pointed at Tadashima’s feet, as if she had resigned herself to the whole affair. Tadashima’s instincts warned him against pursuing this any further, but his detective’s curiosity won out.

“When’s the big day?”

“Um, it’s tomorrow. Hitsuma…I mean, my fiancé, got everything together at breakneck speed. He insisted.”

Tadashima couldn’t believe his ears.

“Hitsuma? You said Hitsuma just now, right?”

“Yes…”

“You don’t mean Superintendent Atsuro Hitsuma from the department by any chance, do you?”

“Do…you know him?”

“Do I know him? Well…”

Now Tadashima was on the verge of forgetting what he had come there for. Hitsuma never even gave the slightest hint that he was about to become a wedded man—and it was tomorrow? That fast? With a sixteen-year-old?

Is Mr. Hitsuma hiding this marriage from the public? But why?

Kisara stood up, opened a drawer in her ebony office desk, and returned. There was a gold pocket watch in her hand. Opening the cover, the watch face glittered like the Milky Way, jewels festooned across it. It took only one glance to see how exquisite the timepiece was.

“When it was settled between myself and Mr. Hitsuma…he gave this to me. It’s nice, you know? Not having to worry…about money, and things.”

There was not even a faint echo of happiness in her voice. It seemed like she was talking to herself more than Tadashima, attempting to shoo some lingering regret out of her mind. Tadashima wasn’t sure how to respond, so he took a teacup to his lips, tried a sip—and winced.

“Um…I’m sorry for being rude and all, but you made this tea with water, right?”

“Huh?” For a moment, the spark of reason returned to Kisara’s filmy eyes, her cheeks blushing. “Oh, no, I messed it up again… Oh, and I greeted a guest wearing nothing but this…! I’m so stupid.”

Without warning, her face twisted. She brought both hands to it. “I hate it.”

“What?”

She finally broke, Tadashima thought as her body began to tremble.

“I hate it… Really, I…I don’t want to get married to Mr. Hitsuma. I—I want to see Satomi. Satomi… He… Why did he have to die?”

Now the story behind this unnerving scene made sense.

Hitsuma, for reasons he couldn’t surmise, was hiding Rentaro’s continued existence from Kisara. She saw what had happened at the Plaza Hotel, and from that, she thought he was dead. And no one had told her otherwise.

This was starting to make him incredibly furious. Yes, he knew it hadn’t been reported in the news. The reputation of the police department was at stake. He was enough of a lifer in the force to put up with those sorts of politics. But she was practically family to the guy. Shouldn’t Hitsuma have at least told her the truth, as long as she promised to keep it under wraps? And now he was forcing his hand in marriage on a woman who barely qualified as an adult? What was he thinking?

Tadashima opened his mouth. The truth had to come out—

But the logical side of his mind stopped him. Doing this, it screamed, would be an act of open rebellion against Atsuro Hitsuma. Tadashi Hitsuma, his father and main backer in the force, was the commissioner of the whole police department. The big boss. If he did anything to draw his attention, Tadashima could be drummed out of there the very next day.

But if he shut his mouth now, he was sure he’d regret it for ages to come.

What you’re doing is wrong, Mr. Hitsuma.

Tadashima placed both elbows on the glass top of the reception-room desk, took a deep breath, and exhaled.

“President Tendo, I want you to listen carefully to me. The police have been hiding it in order to cover up their mistakes, but Rentaro Satomi is still alive.”

A crash echoed across the room. Kisara froze, the teacup falling helplessly out of her hand.

—Then, as if waiting for that exact moment, they heard a much gentler sound from somewhere. A familiar melody, the pure sound of musical iron keys being plucked by a mechanism. It was a music box.

He didn’t have to search long for it.

“Why is that…?”

Tadashima stared at it, sitting there on the desk, then searched out the wall clock. It was exactly midnight.