Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 - Chapter 3.1

  I want to see Chuuya suffer as a human

I wonder which poet first described the blue in the sky as the color of sadness.

The Yokohama sky that day was a clear blue full of such sadness. The sounds of cars coming and going, the trains passing by, the hustle and bustle of the city: Everything was sucked into the azure firmament.

Master Chuuya was simply sitting under that blue sky, halfway up the tallest building in Yokohama atop a slight protrusion on the structure. There were no handrails or safety ropes, just a few inches of protrusion between him and a drop to the surface far below.

It was impossible to observe his expression from the ground. His motionless form was only staring straight at the sky and soaking in the breeze. He had been in the same position for hours.

I was looking up at him. He did not answer my calls, nor could he hear me when I shouted his name, so there was no way I could contact him.

“The hell is he doing?” asked Shirase, standing by my side.

“Perhaps he doesn’t want to speak with anyone right now,” I replied as I looked up. There was surely only one thing on his mind in that moment: The detective was killed because of us.

After the incident at the police station, we reexamined the evidence. The blue cell phone Verlaine had requested from the smuggler was the exact same phone that Detective Murase had on him, and when I looked into said phone’s history, there were saved messages and signs of usage that dated back six years. However, the phone’s serial number revealed that it was a brand-new model manufactured just six months ago. The paint on the shell was moderately chipped, which made it look like an older model, but dating that shell revealed that these marks were created recently from fingernail scratches or falling onto the floor.

By contrast, I was able to confirm that the phone directory and call history inside the device all belonged to Detective Murase himself, and I learned from other detectives that he had been using said blue phone regularly for years. Put simply, someone must have switched the phone with a fake that was so finely crafted that Detective Murase himself did not even realize it.

But for what purpose?

I made another interesting discovery. There were traces of some sort of program inside the device that self-deleted after a certain amount of time. Now this is merely my assumption, but perhaps Verlaine wanted to eavesdrop on Detective Murase calling someone else. Therefore, he switched out the phones and waited for the detective to make a call. The program he used to bug the phone had since been automatically deleted, which meant he had already managed to eavesdrop on the call. He had no use for the detective after that and killed him.

Detective Murase’s death was preventable. If we had paid more attention to the cell phone the smuggler had procured, or if we had realized how unnatural it was for Verlaine to converse with us as if he were passing the time instead of immediately killing Shirase, then we might have been able to stop the detective’s murder.

However, there was no use in allocating memory resources to something that was already over because Verlaine was most likely already approaching his next target. Furthermore, the clue the detective left for us could guide us straight to Verlaine.

“Phew… I honestly thought I was a goner back there.” Shirase’s harried expression looked somewhat forced. “Never thought I’d be targeted by a monster like that guy. I guess all future kings go through these kinds of hardships, unlike regular folks. It’s rough out there.”

“I see.”

He seemed happy, contrary to what he was saying. Yet another reason why human emotional circuits make no sense to me.

“By the way, Shirase…,” I began. “Why are you still here?”

“What? Why wouldn’t I be here?! That monster’s coming to kill me! And it’s your fault! Both of you! It’s only reasonable to expect you two to protect me, right? And I’m not going anywhere until this is over!”

I tried to reason with him. “But you are not Verlaine’s target. It was the detective—”

“There’s still two more targets, right? And there’s no guarantee that I’m not next!”

It was a far-fetched argument, but an argument nonetheless. There were still two unknown targets. As long as there was a possibility of one being Shirase, then he needed to be stuffed into the trunk of a car and locked away until this was all over… But unfortunately, that was not an option.

“Hey, don’t look so worried! It’ll be fine! I was the brains of the Sheep, and you’re gonna have me on your side now, so there’s nothing to worry about! I’ll help you find the next target in no time!”

My arithmetic operator indicated it was highly probable Shirase was not the brains of anything but simply was useless in every other regard. I immediately shut down the operation. I did not want to know the truth.

All of a sudden, I received notification that a different operation, which I had been running in the background, finished.

“Hmm. Intriguing.”

I observed the audiovisual data that made its way to my information feed and crossed my arms.

“What’s intriguing? What are you looking at?”

Shirase leaned forward and tried to follow my gaze, but the information was being displayed over my field of vision for the sake of convenience, so obviously, I was the only one who could see it.

“The detective’s call history on his cell phone.”

“Hmm? I thought it got deleted.”

“It did. But I was able to salvage the history from the base station that relayed the call. I found the following conversation during my search.”

I began playing the analyzed data from the speaker in my throat. The audio started with static—typical when restoring encrypted audio—but it slowly began to fade until the speaker’s voice was clear.

“It’s me, brother.”

It was Detective Murase’s voice. He was talking into the phone, so his breathing was mixed in with the audio.

“The gravity manipulator came like you said he would. And there was someone with him! Just who is this guy? What’s his relationship with Chuuya?! Call me back the moment you get this message!”

Once the audio cut off, Shirase curiously tilted his head. “What was that all about?”

“The time stamp suggests the message took place a short while after Verlaine broke into the police station. He left it on the answering machine while the station was in a panic. I tried phoning the number he called, but it was already disconnected.”

“Uh-huh.” Shirase’s expression made it clear that he did not find the information useful. “So you think it’s odd that he called his own brother?”

“I do,” I replied. “Because according to the records, the detective’s brother is already dead.”

“What?”

“I took a peek at Detective Murase’s personnel file in the city police’s internal affairs department,” I explained while opening the necessary information in my feed. “According to the file, his elder brother worked at an army engineering lab as a civilian researcher. However, he died in a lab accident fourteen years ago in April. His real name was redacted and he was simply referred to as N in the reports. There wasn’t even a single picture of him. I looked everywhere.”

“N, huh?” Shirase frowned dubiously.

“Detective Murase had only one brother according to his family registry. It’s quite curious. Maybe he had someone close to him that he simply called his brother?”

“Doubt it,” came a sudden voice from behind.

“Whoa?! You scared the crap outta me, Chuuya!”

Out of nowhere, Master Chuuya was suddenly standing behind us.

Ignoring Shirase’s complaint, he continued, “That detective told me his brother got him the job as a security guard at some military facility a long time ago. Said it was around the end of the war, and that was about nine years ago…which means his brother didn’t die fourteen years ago in April. He’s alive, and the records just say he’s dead.”

“You mean…the military falsified the records?” asked Shirase.

Master Chuuya nodded. “Yeah. No real other way to explain why there’s no photos of him or records with his real name. He’s dead to the public. A ghost that can’t be found. And that’s the kind of guy the military needed.”

“But for what?” I asked.

“I mean, it’s pretty easy to guess after all we know by this point, right?” He stared at us, his gaze harsher. “The detective’s brother was probably researching Arahabaki.”

The utter shock suspended every one of my processes for 0.02 seconds. N was one of the humans who created Arahabaki…?

“Arahabaki was an extremely high-level national secret, right? The kind of secret that other countries sent their spies here to steal. Obviously, the military didn’t want the researchers’ addresses or histories gettin’ out, so they ‘killed’ N and buried all his info,” Master Chuuya explained. “Sounds about right, doesn’t it?”

I ran some calculations while replying, “All the researchers supposedly died in the explosion Arahabaki created that destroyed the research facility. Are you saying that this researcher, N, survived?”

“Yeah, and he was probably the only survivor, too. That’s why Verlaine’s going after him,” Master Chuuya said. “His real name is unknown, his whereabouts are unknown, and there’s no way to get in touch with him. The only person that knew how to get in touch with him was…”

“His younger brother, the detective…”

“Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. This doesn’t make any sense,” Shirase suddenly commented.

I looked back at him. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? I mean that you guys made so many threats about it that I wouldn’t be able to forget even if I wanted to.” Shirase haughtily placed a hand on his hip. “Verlaine’s gonna kill everyone who’s keeping Chuuya from leaving Japan. That’s what you guys told me! Scared me so bad I thought I was gonna have a heart attack. I mean, I wasn’t scared. But what I’m trying to say is…!”

Verlaine’s objective was to take Master Chuuya with him. Shirase was right about that. Which meant…

“In other words, N has some sort of information that would make Master Chuuya wish to stay in Japan. That is why Verlaine killed the detective. And N himself is next…”

The researcher N was high on Verlaine’s list of priorities for reasons unknown to us. That was certain. Which led to the inevitable question:

“What exactly does N know, then?”

Master Chuuya shrugged. “Beats me. We’ll just have to locate him first to find out.”

“Wait, wait, wait! I am not cool with this! Stop making decisions without me!” complained Shirase. “You’re gonna search for this researcher? The one Verlaine’s obviously looking for, too? No way I’m clashing with that guy again! Take me somewhere safe and protect me, damn it!”

Master Chuuya watched Shirase flail his arms about for a full ten seconds before deeply sighing.

“What are you lookin’ at me like that for?!” Shirase demanded.

“Nothing… If I told ya, it’d just make things worse,” Master Chuuya said before averting his gaze. Shirase opened his mouth as if he was about to complain, so I decided to step in before things went south.

“Unfortunately, I believe Shirase has a point as well,” I stated. “Verlaine is already far ahead of us on his search for N. To make matters worse, he is a former spy. He probably already knows where N is. Even if we were to begin searching ourselves and ended up learning where N was hiding, all we would find would be a dead body and Verlaine fully prepared for our arrival. There is an extremely high probability of that happening.”

“No, that’s not going to happen,” claimed a sudden voice.

It was an unfamiliar voice. One that belonged to an adult male.

I turned around, but there was nobody behind me. Bizarre. I looked around in every direction to find the owner of the voice.

“Where are you looking? I’m right here.” The voice spoke again; where was it coming from?

“Hey, uh…”

Shirase was staring at me strangely, as if he had just seen a ghost. That was when I suddenly realized what was going on.

I was the one speaking.

“You didn’t cover your tracks after accessing the military’s information terminal, so I traced them and found you.” My mouth moved, producing words in an unknown man’s voice. “We both have secrets we need to keep, so I apologize for my rude behavior.”

I immediately ran a diagnosis. A third party had hacked into my feed. Disgusting!

Fortunately, they hadn’t installed any malware that could alter my system or killware that could cause me to lose control. But it still felt absolutely vile. It was time to cut off the hacker’s connection.

“Hold on. Don’t cut the connection just yet.” Master Chuuya raised his hand to stop me as if he knew what I was going to do. He then faced me and asked, “Who are you?”

“Someone who needs your help.” My mouth was moving on its own. “And someone who could help you as well. I’m the man you call N.”

“So you’re N, huh? How convenient.” Master Chuuya snorted. “But what’s with the sudden call? I figured you’d prefer to stay hidden.”

“The tides have changed. I’m sure you all must have realized this, too,” freely continued the unfamiliar voice. I was honestly getting sick of putting up with it. “I’m going to be killed by the greatest assassin in the world at this rate, and the truth will be forever lost to the darkness along with me. I’d die before ever telling you all the truth—whereas, if I told you the truth, there would be no point in killing me anymore.”

Right as I was vowing to pull my own tongue out if he talked for ten more seconds, N suddenly made a wonderful announcement.

“I can’t say any more here, though. I need you to come meet me. I’ll leave my address in the robot’s feed.”

Master Chuuya quickly replied, “Hey, wait. You want us to come see you? What exactly do you know?”

“Everything, Chuuya. Everything about you,” the voice claimed in a calm, detached manner. “I can’t wait to see you.”

The connection suddenly cut off. I wanted to let out a sigh of relief, but Master Chuuya seemed to feel quite the opposite.