Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue

The tragic event had finally come to an end.

Countless people died, but the incident hardly remained in anyone’s memory. It was like a typhoon or a blackout that randomly occurred one day. While the damage was great, few knew the true reason everything happened.

Of course, things turned out exactly how the European government wanted them to. The newspapers claimed that the destruction on the outskirts of Yokohama was the result of a conflict between the Port Mafia, a criminal organization, and an opposing group. They said grenades, rockets, and other explosives had caused all the damage to the terrain. That was it.

Nevertheless, it was only natural that skilled-crime specialists started investigating destruction of this scale—for instance, the military police’s Skilled Crime Task Force, the sworn enemy of illegal organizations such as the Port Mafia.

However, the military police’s investigation came to a complete stop only a few weeks after the tragedy. It was as if it had drawn its last breath. Everyone familiar with the matter racked their brains, wondering what in the world happened. After all, no one would have been surprised if the military police eliminated the Port Mafia. The Mafia was powerful, but they didn’t have enough influence to silence the military police, Japan’s most powerful criminal investigation organization. Curious minds wondered what kind of magic the Port Mafia used.

The Port Mafia didn’t use any magic, though. There was no need to. Great Britain’s and France’s public safety agencies had intervened in the Ministry of Justice’s decision via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And just like that, the entire event was swept under the rug. After all, the secret weapons of two of the strongest nations in the world clashed and obliterated each other; the Japanese government didn’t want a single crumb of evidence getting out.

Thanks to the efforts of Europe’s most powerful nations, only a few members of the Port Mafia were charged, and a good portion of those charges were for petty crimes that simply resulted in fines or suspended prison terms.

And that was the end of the King of Assassins Incident that ravaged the Port Mafia.

Two months after the incident, Buichirou Shirase, former member of the Sheep, was at port, looking at his watch in aggravation.

It was the harbor in Yokohama for passenger boats. Scores of travelers were walking down the pier, coming and going with large suitcases in hand. Shirase stood in front of a boat ramp, constantly glaring at his Swiss watch before looking back toward the port entrance. He was waiting for someone.

Eventually, someone came driving toward the port on a large motorcycle. The crimson motorcycle exited the lane and drew closer, avoiding pedestrians until it stopped right at the end of the pier. The driver got off and approached Shirase.

“Hey, sorry to keep ya waiting.”

It was Chuuya.

“’Bout time you got here!” yelled Shirase. “The man who saved your life is about to leave. What took you so long?”

“My bad.”

Chuuya took a hat out of his motorcycle’s saddlebag and started spinning it around his finger as he approached Shirase.

“You really like that hat, huh? That was his, right?”

“Yeah.” After spinning it a few more times, he firmly placed it on his head. “I’d rather not wear my brother’s hand-me-downs, but it’s got some pretty useful functions. When do ya leave?”

“The boat leaves in five minutes.” Shirase checked his watch once more. “Chuuya, you smell like incense. Did you go visiting those graves again? No wonder you were late… Sigh. What companionship. You always put your friends’ needs before your own. You carry too much weight on those shoulders. Don’t you ever get tired of it all?”

“Half this weight I’m always carryin’ is yours, Shirase.” Chuuya stopped by Shirase’s side. “Besides, that had nothing to do with companionship. I just went to go thank ’em for the bike.”

He pointed his chin at the motorcycle behind him. The streamlined bike stood cold and silent.

“Uh-huh. Whatever you say.”

Shirase gave a lukewarm reply, then stuffed his hands in his pockets. There was a brief silence after that.

Chuuya looked up at the passenger boat. It was large, white, and old but sturdy.

“Still can’t believe you’re goin’ to London,” remarked Chuuya, squinting.

“Wish you were me, huh? A future king needs a big city to set up base, after all!” Shirase gloated. “I learned something from all this. The mechanical detective that died, the king of assassins—they were incredible. I couldn’t believe people like them actually existed. The world really is a big place! That’s why I’m gonna use the gemstones I stole from the research facility to set up a base in London! The next time you see me, I’m gonna be the king of an organization even bigger than the Port Mafia. I’ll make sure to keep a position open for you, Chuuya.”

Chuuya rolled his eyes and let out a sigh before shaking his head. “Lookin’ forward to it.”

The steam whistle suddenly blew, signaling that the boat was about to depart. A woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker telling everyone to prepare for boarding.

“That’s me.”

Shirase grabbed the bags at his feet, then faced the ramp. But right as he was about to leave, Chuuya said, “Be careful over there, Shirase. I’m not gonna be flying over to London to save ya if you try gettin’ yourself killed again.”

“Ha-ha-ha. You take care, too, Chuuya. I’m not gonna be comin’ back to Yokohama to save your ass again, either.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Chuuya sneered.

“‘Yeah, yeah,’ my ass. I hope you haven’t forgotten I’ve saved your life twice already: once under the bridge nine years ago and once in that underground research facility pretty recently.”

“You also tried killing me by stabbing me in the back once, too.”

“Two minus one still puts me ahead.”

Chuuya laughed. Shirase did, too.

After Shirase walked up to the ramp, he held out his knuckles to Chuuya, and they lightly bumped fists. After that, they bumped one fist on top of the other, then once again in reverse, before knocking their elbows together and thumping their chests.

That was how the Sheep used to greet each other—it was a secret handshake only they knew.

“Later.”

Shirase and Chuuya turned away from each other and began to walk off. Neither of them looked back even once.

After Chuuya returned to the pier, he was getting ready to mount his motorcycle when a slow-moving black car approached him. As the back seat window slowly opened, someone inside called Chuuya’s name.

It was Dazai. He was dressed unusually for him: a black suit and a tie, the kind of formal attire that a guest of honor would wear.

“You’ve got work in five minutes.”

Chuuya and Dazai stood below the ramp to a luxury cruise ship that must have cost an absolute fortune. The boat that Shirase had just left on couldn’t possibly compare in size or substance. The flawlessly chalky-white ship was without a single smudge; its five floors of cabins had all the trappings of a high-end hotel. Wherever the passengers went, they had seasoned couriers by their sides to guide them. The ship’s navigators had a proven track record as well. This ship wouldn’t rock even a tenth of how much a typical passenger ship would at twice the speed.

The ship’s name: the Bosverian.

It was a government vessel for only the highest-level state officials. After the ramp lowered, a group of delegates got off the ship. In the front were bodyguards in black suits who were vigilantly keeping an eye out in every direction. Each one of them had bulges under their clothes at their sides, making it clear they were carrying pistols.

Descending behind them were bearded men who were clearly government officials. They were seasoned, capable, and had the grayish-brown eyes of individuals whose thoughts couldn’t be read. Even their clothes were top of the line.

A man holding a gold and mother-of-pearl cane pushed aside a crew member, who was trying to help him off the ramp, with the tip of the cane—as if he were shooing away a stray dog on the street.

“The noble man-eating fiends are here,” Dazai whispered to Chuuya by his side.

These were high government officials from the UK who had come to conduct a follow-up inquiry on the King of Assassins Incident, which was loaded with state secrets. A major incident such as this one could not end as a simple criminal case, so the officials were sent to Japan to further investigate. The Port Mafia came to welcome and help them with their inquiry, since they had been involved as well.

The Port Mafia, a criminal organization, was meeting with investigators from the British government.

The circumstances were bizarre, but it wasn’t completely irrational, and the Port Mafia’s boss had his own self-interest in doing this.

First, it wasn’t Japan’s foreign ministry or even the military police who had been briefed on the situation. It was the Port Mafia. After all, several European governments had completely hid this incident from the Japanese government.

In addition, there was a reason the Port Mafia had to keep a sharp eye on what the British government was doing. They were suspicious that the UK would eliminate any Mafia members involved in the King of Assassins Incident to cover it up and bury any state secrets.

Of course, the Port Mafia wasn’t planning on leaking the truth about the incident or any of its secrets, but they didn’t know if Great Britain would actually take a criminal organization at their word. Therefore, they sent Dazai to receive them. If the British government intended to eliminate those involved in the incident, then Dazai would have to negotiate and get them to stop. And if he failed, then the Mafia would have to eliminate this inquiry committee before they snuffed them out. That was why Chuuya was sent with him.

A major multinational dispute involving the Port Mafia might break out depending on what the inquiry committee did.

“Let the game of deception begin,” Dazai said with a giggle as he approached the committee. The bodyguards immediately reacted to his presence and reached for the guns at their waists.

“Thank you for coming all this way to Japan, noble men of the British Empire.” Dazai bowed. He spoke with unusual eloquence and courtesy. “You gentlemen are from the inquiry committee, I presume, yes? May I speak to your representative?”

“‘Representative’?” The bodyguard Dazai was speaking to cocked his head. “These individuals are the inquiry’s engineering advisers, so I suppose that would make Dr. Wollstonecraft their representative…”

Wollstonecraft…?

Chuuya wore a curious expression. That name sounded awfully familiar.

“Oh.” Dazai seemed to have immediately remembered the name. “I’ve heard that name before. That’s the skill user engineer who designed Adam Frankenstein, yes? Hmm… I suppose you’re Dr. Wollstonecraft?”

Dazai had followed the bodyguard’s gaze, then locked his eyes on the oldest, most dignified person in the committee: a man with a shaggy white beard and a receding hairline. Pinned to the man’s jacket were two medals he’d received for his achievements in the military science department.

“Ho-ho-ho!” The elderly man laughed cheerfully when he realized Dazai was talking to him. “No, I am not Dr. Wollstonecraft. I am merely an assistant. The doctor is over there disembarking as we speak.”

Dazai and Chuuya looked over to the ramp the man was staring at. At the top was a massive suitcase simply sitting there with no one holding it…or so it seemed at first.

“’Lo there. I’m Dr. Wollstonecraft… Goodness, so this is the country I’ve been hearing about. It’s a lot bigger than it looked on the map.”

A petite individual emerged from the suitcase’s shadow.

“…You’re joking.”

It was a young girl. She had blond hair and wore a white lab coat. Her suitcase was certainly big, but she was incredibly small, hence why it towered over her. Her large glasses covered half her face, and pinned to her coat were over twenty medals only given to individuals for their contributions to science.

“Hold up…” Chuuya’s face twitched.

“Things are getting interesting.” Dazai grinned.

The young girl carried her massive suitcase—or rather, clung to it—as she dragged it down the ramp with every bit of strength she had.

“Heave-ho! I am—hngh—Dr.—Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley—hngh!” She spoke between grunts, pulling the suitcase along. “Some call me a child prodigy—hngh—but only those who cannot see what lies beneath the surface—hngh. My achievements are thanks to my skill that allows me to design anything I want—hngh. Plus, I’m a genius.”

“You’re not gonna help her with her luggage?” a fed up Chuuya asked the elderly gentleman.

“Ho-ho-ho! The doctor does not take kindly to other people touching her personal belongings.” The man chuckled merrily. “Not even Her Majesty the Queen could lay a hand on those suitcases. If she tried, the doctor would scream and cry like a child, as if she had been sent ten years back in time.”

“Wasn’t she still in her mom’s belly ten years ago…?” Chuuya replied with an annoyed look on his face.

“Besides, she has been really looking forward to her travels here, so she packed all her favorite items in that suitcase. Nobody is getting their hands on it.”

“Old man! Could you stop making me sound like an ordinary little girl? I’m basically a legal adult now. I’m just petite… Hngh.”

After finally making it down the ramp, the engineer wiped the sweat off her brow, then tidied her clothing.

“Pleasure to meet you, citizens of Japan. Now…you must be Chuuya, yes? I heard you took good care of Adam for me.”

The moment he heard Adam’s name, Chuuya scowled.

“I dunno about that,” he then replied. “If anything, he took good care of us.”

The little girl re-centered her large glasses and scrutinized him.

“He sacrificed his life to save mine,” he told her. “Adam was your greatest work, right? Sorry for breaking him.”

“Hmm.”

The engineer wheeled around to Chuuya’s right and observed him before switching to his left and doing the same. She then stood in front of him and quietly examined him as if he were some sort of intriguing research subject.

“You’re right about that. Adam was my greatest invention,” she replied with her arms crossed. “In fact, I wish I could have continued upgrading him in my lab for the rest of my days instead of having to send him to some rubbish island on an investigation.”

Chuuya listened in silence. His expression made it clear he wasn’t looking at what was in front of him. He was watching a scene from the past.

Dr. Wollstonecraft cleared her throat with a childlike tone. “What makes Adam especially incredible is that he was programmed with intelligence that allowed him to think and make decisions for himself. In other words, Adam decided to sacrifice himself of his own accord.”

She then smiled.

“He must have felt you were worth that much. I trust Adam and the decision he made. I appreciate your apology, but don’t let it bother you.”

Chuuya opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t put it into words. He just stood idly by like a child who forgot his way home. Dazai looked at him, then faintly smirked in resignation.

“In fact, I was against using Adam for such a frivolous investigation from the very start,” Dr. Wollstonecraft began in a huff as she crossed her arms again. “The government is always like this. They send a mechanical detective, then blow him up once they’re done to keep any secret information from getting out. All the best trial data comes from these machines’ social interactions with different cultures during solo missions! I suppose this is the government’s way of saying we ought to neglect science in favor of human life!”

Chuuya and Dazai rolled their eyes.

“Bring it here,” Dr. Wollstonecraft ordered. One of her attendants brought over a black tube around the length of an arm. “That’s why I, being the ill-natured woman that I am, created a detachable sub-processor and nonvolatile memory behind the government’s back.”

She then pulled something out of the black tube.

“And installed it in here.”

The arm-length tube was, in fact, carrying an arm: Adam’s right arm that had flown out of the beast with Chuuya and anchored itself into the ground.

“That’s…” It was as if a question mark had appeared over Chuuya’s head. “I looked everywhere for that after the incident, but I never found it. What’s it doing here?”

“If anything, it’s only natural I did this, innit?”

Dr. Wollstonecraft placed a finger on her oversize suitcase, and it automatically unlocked after identifying her vitals. A man then emerged from within, grabbed the arm, and attached it to his shoulder before saying:

“Would you like to hear an android joke, Master Chuuya?”

Chuuya stood in utter disbelief, mouth agape in astonishment. He eventually took in a deep breath—possibly the deepest he’d ever taken. Then all of a sudden, he cracked a smile…

“Ha-ha-ha!”

…and laughed.

Three days after the engineering advisers and Dr. Wollstonecraft arrived in Japan, the main unit—the European joint inquiry committee—met up with them to conduct a more elaborate investigation.

They especially focused on what remained of the battleground in the woodlands outside of town. After all, that was where the physical fight took place between a singularity weapon and the rampaging Demonic Beast Guivre that clashed and destroyed each other—something entirely unprecedented. During their thorough investigation, the committee managed to obtain valuable records such as interviews and video recordings.

The Port Mafia was cooperative from start to finish. They provided lodging, vehicles, and even chauffeurs whenever necessary. Any equipment the investigation required, they had it delivered. All Mafia members were ordered to cooperate with the hearing investigations.

The inquiry committee even tried looking into the underground research facility N was using, but the Japanese government unsurprisingly refused entry. It was filled with top secret skill research, after all. When politics got involved with the investigation, the higher-ups at the embassy secretly convened to discuss matters, and they made a deal that only Japan had to submit a detailed report on the incident.

The joint inquiry committee reached their conclusion after a month of investigating. Verlaine was dead. After becoming a singularity life-form and destroying everything in his path, he exhausted every bit of internal energy he had and disappeared. There wasn’t a single bit of who he was left.

The committee was also surprised that the singularity weapon, the Shell, did not work on singularity life-forms, and they believed this discovery would undoubtedly advance weapon research in Europe even further. The committee, thrilled with their better-than-expected findings, thanked the Port Mafia for their total cooperation, and returned to Europe.

Right after Ougai Mori saw them off at port, he let out a sigh of relief.

“This was utterly exhausting.” Mori rubbed his shoulders while watching the government ship fade into the distance. “I thought I was used to dealing with bureaucrats after all those years in the army… Ah, I could really go for a cup of hot tea right now.”

“Oh? I had no idea you were in the army, boss.”

A woman in a crimson kimono stood by Mori’s side. It was Kouyou.

“Ah, I didn’t tell you?” Mori smirked ever so slightly at her. “So? Give me an update on the underground shelter.”

“No one has entered or exited,” she replied, narrowing her eyes. “It appears the esteemed members of the inquiry did not even suspect a thing.”

Like a cold-blooded animal, Kouyou curled her lips into a smile even colder than the blade at her hip.

“They have absolutely no idea that Verlaine is still alive inside.”

Now, we’ll trace back time.

Guivre appeared in the woodlands, Adam self-destructed, and Chuuya defeated Guivre through opening his Gate.

Something else occurred four minutes and thirty seconds after that at the elevated grounds of what remained of the destroyed highway. Pulverized foundation, concrete, wire, iron framework, and pipes were scattered about like piles of dead bodies.

Atop it all was Verlaine on the verge of ceasing to exist.

He couldn’t even bend his fingers. His breathing was shallow, and his vision was too blurry to see the stars anymore. Verlaine, who was nothing more than a character set for a seal, had lost his true form—the singularity life-form. The energy supporting his life had dried up, and his heart was close to stopping.

Even Verlaine’s thoughts had slowed down just like his breathing. Although the jaws of death were about to swallow him whole, he was completely calm, and he wished for nothing.

So this is death, he thought as his consciousness was on the verge of fading. It wasn’t as monstrous as he expected. He did not cry in agony. He did not yell with regret. He did not succumb to fear. It was peaceful and felt ever so empty. Considering the life he’d lived, Verlaine didn’t have any regrets now. He should have never even been born in the first place. Nothing in his life was worth regretting.

I did cause a lot of trouble for many people, though: the French government, my assassination targets, the Port Mafia, my brother… And in the end, I gained nothing from it. That was the one somewhat unfortunate thing, like a blemish on the tale of my life.

But no matter; I’m about to die. So forgive me.

The tips of his fingers grew cold until he eventually lost all sensation.

His pulse weakened, and after his body briefly went into convulsions—

—his heart stopped.

A dozen or so seconds went by.

Verlaine realized he was still breathing. He saw something red out of the corner of his eye and looked toward it.

A crimson cube had penetrated his chest. It encompassed his heart and was stimulating it into beating.

What is this?

Verlaine was confused. Not because he didn’t know what the cube was; rather, he was confused because he was all too familiar with it.

Why is this here?

“I have never seen you in such poor shape,” said a familiar voice.

Verlaine thought he was hearing things. When he saw the man who had spoken, he thought he was seeing things.

“Oh, come on,” Verlaine muttered in almost a whisper. “This is ridiculous. There’s no way you should be here.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” agreed the man. “But spies do appear in unexpected places at unexpected times, yes?”

It was Arthur Rimbaud. He was wearing a thick thermal jacket with a heavy scarf around his neck and rabbit-fur earmuffs over his long black hair and gloomy eyes.

This was the man who saved Verlaine from the laboratory—and his partner as well. And it was the man who Verlaine betrayed.

The subspace that created crimson cubes was a sign that Rimbaud’s skill had activated. He could control anything within that space as he pleased.

“Paul, what did you learn during your life as a spy?” Rimbaud asked with a sigh. “How many times did I tell you that you had to rid yourself of emotion during missions if you wanted to succeed? What was the mission? What was the emotion? Were you taking out your hatred for humans on them? Or were you trying to save your brother? You rushed in there without a clear plan, and this is what happened. And to think, you could have taken out the entire human race you so despised, if you hadn’t taught your brother how to stop Guivre.”

“Oh… Now I get it. You’re just an illusion,” Verlaine said sarcastically. “You’re a hallucination that has appeared before my death. You are the grim reaper that my guilt is showing me. There’s no explanation for you being here otherwise. Rimbaud died an entire year ago, after all.”

“I am neither an illusion nor the grim reaper. I am a ghost.” Rimbaud shook his head. “I was waiting for you in this country.”

Verlaine quietly stared at the man as if to uncover what he really was.

“You’re not a ghost.” Verlaine eventually shook his head, too. “And not because it’s unscientific, but because if you were a ghost and not a hallucination, you wouldn’t help me like this. You would put a deadly curse on me and finish me off.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I betrayed you. I tried to kill you.”

His chilling voice echoed through the night. Rimbaud did not respond but instead quietly gazed down at the collapsed Verlaine.

“Don’t look at me like that. Get angry. Hate me. Punch me, kick me, strangle me, Rimbaud!” Verlaine screamed from the ground. “I shot you in the back! I caused that explosion that made you lose your memories and forget who you were! I’m the reason you died in this foreign country! If you really were a ghost, you would have at least one reason to despise me, Rimbaud! You’d want me to pay for what I did!”

“Actually, it’s quite the opposite.” Rimbaud shook his head. “I was waiting for you…because I wanted to apologize.”

“‘Apologize’? For what?” Verlaine knit his brows as if he couldn’t comprehend what the man was saying.

“I wanted to save you, and I thought I was.” Rimbaud bent down and held a hand over Verlaine’s chest. “But all I ended up giving you was the unwanted pity of a man who merely pretended to understand. I know simply apologizing is not enough to merit forgiveness. I was always wondering what I could give you in return, and then, on the verge of death, I found my answer. I can give you this.”

The cube below Rimbaud’s palm gradually grew around Verlaine’s heart until it expanded enough to encompass his entire body along with Rimbaud’s as well.

This was Rimbaud’s subspace skill. Inside the subspace Rimbaud could do anything with the exception of bringing back the dead.

But it appeared this was the exception.

Verlaine noticed his fingers twitch. He could bend them now. It wasn’t an illusion. His eyes moved, and his blurry vision gradually focused.

“You…”

Verlaine moved his arms. Then he twisted his body and sat up. He gazed at his palm, then the back of his hand. He made a fist, then opened his hand. He could feel the blood warming his fingers.

He looked to his side to ask Rimbaud what was going on, but Rimbaud wasn’t standing there anymore. He was lying on the ground next to Verlaine.

“What’s going on?” stammered Verlaine, overcome with surprise. “Oh… You used your skill…on yourself, didn’t you?”

“I can use it only once in a lifetime,” Rimbaud whispered with a feeble smile. “But it worked.”

The ability to turn humans into skills: That was Arthur Rimbaud’s skill.

He could turn the dead into skill-derived life-forms, then freely control them, albeit only within his crimson subspace. Those who were turned into skills would maintain the skills and memories they had while they were alive and could even use their skills as well. It was a unique skill that went beyond what was thought possible, perfect for a top spy even in all of Europe.

And he had just used that very skill on himself.

“You don’t need to feel guilty. I was already dead,” Rimbaud weakly assured Verlaine. “What you see here is merely data. And yet it is still an extremely gratifying feeling because I get to leave you with this.”

A red light began to shine from Rimbaud’s body. It was something that Verlaine had seen before: redshifting.

“Wait.” Verlaine, realizing what was going on, reached out to Rimbaud. “Rimbaud, wait. Don’t go.”

“You didn’t like the birthday present I gave you.” Rimbaud smiled apologetically. “So I’m giving this to you instead, as a replacement. Happy birthday, Paul. I’m glad you were born—and I’m so glad I got to meet you.”

The subspace cube rapidly condensed until it was sucked into Verlaine’s heart and disappeared.

All that was left were the rubble, Verlaine, and the cool night breeze.

Verlaine took several dazed steps, looked around, then seated himself on top of the rubble.

“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha…”

He hung his head and let out an empty laugh.

“Rimbaud, you waited an entire year for me just for this? To do something like this…?”

Verlaine realized what Rimbaud had done. He’d turned himself into a self-contradicting singularity to save his friend.

Rimbaud, after turning himself into a skill, used his skill on himself—namely, on a skill-derived life-form. He then once again applied the skill on his new self that came to life, and through repeating this process ad infinitum, he generated a self-contradicting singularity. In the end, he took that singularity and gave it to Verlaine in place of Demonic Beast Guivre.

Verlaine tried to stand, but his arms didn’t have the strength to prop himself up, and he fell to his knees amid the rubble. He was weakening. Perhaps the singularity Rimbaud created couldn’t output power indefinitely, unlike the limitless energy of Verlaine’s past self-contradicting singularity. Verlaine would no longer be able to tirelessly manipulate gravity anymore. And yet he didn’t really care…because he had just lost something even more valuable.

“Why, Rimbaud?” He gazed at the heavens. “Why did you smile at the very end? I betrayed you, and you died as a result.”

He knew the answer. He just didn’t want to admit it.

Rimbaud, the man who saved me from Pan and gave me the freedom to live.

Rimbaud, the man who trained me, raised me to become a spy, and went on countless dangerous missions by my side.

Rimbaud, the man who so bashfully gave me that hat on my birthday.

“Why did you smile?” asked Verlaine, his voice trembling. “Using your skill on yourself would make you not human anymore. You would be nothing more than superficial information with memories and a personality, and you knew that. So why did you wait for me? Why did you do all that for someone you didn’t even know was coming…?”

That was when it finally hit him. He realized why he told Chuuya how to defeat Guivre.

He hated humans. He didn’t care if every last one of them were dead. And yet he gave Chuuya a hint on how to defeat Guivre because he didn’t think that everyone was equally deserving of death.

There was an exception.

There was one person who had changed his mind.

“I’m sorry, Rimbaud,” he said in almost a whisper as he clenched his jaw. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t treat you like the friend you were. I’m sorry I couldn’t thank you for the present you gave me on my birthday. And now that you’re no longer here… Now I’m just so terribly sad.”

Verlaine’s voice trembled as he lifted his head to the heavens and closed his eyes. He kept still. For the longest time, he remained there facing the night sky.

Yokohama.

The Port Mafia.

There were as many days as there were nights, and there were as many stars in the sky as there were eyes working for the Port Mafia in Yokohama.

The damage the Port Mafia sustained during the King of Assassins Incident was far from light. They lost weapons, soldiers, and countless skill users who were valuable fighters. They’d caught the attention of the authorities as well. That was why the Mafia had to lie low and keep quiet while they rebuilt their forces.

And it turned out to be worth it. Shortly after the King of Assassins Incident, the Dragon’s Head Conflict swept Yokohama off its feet and became the bloodiest eighty-eight days in the history of the city’s underbelly. It was a bloodbath that involved every underground organization. The Port Mafia, who was publicly avoiding trouble and focused on consistent, reliable work, managed to get past the early stages of the conflict with minimal casualties. When the conflict came to an end and the underground world had been ravaged, they were able to rapidly grow their forces like a sapling shooting up after a fire rid the forest of its shady canopy.

The end of the Dragon’s Head Conflict helped the Mafia grow and evolve. The rise of Twin Dark, Dazai’s promotion to executive, the Laughing Lemon Incident, the war against Mimic that resulted in Dazai’s withdrawal from the Mafia, and numerous other events passed until six years later when they clashed with Yokohama’s skilled organization, the Armed Detective Agency.

Time is equal to all.

Verlaine didn’t die. He survived after Rimbaud granted him life, and he was confined in one of the Port Mafia’s underground shelters, something he wanted as well.

There was nowhere left for him in the outside world. He had lost most of his gravity-manipulating skill, which meant the only way he could escape Europe’s long, mighty reach was to live in a hideout deep underground. He had no interest in the outside world. There was nobody he wanted to kill or see. The only person he missed was Rimbaud, but he was gone.

At first, Verlaine sat underground while reading and writing poetry. When he got tired of that, he began doing the same thing Rimbaud did: He trained others.

He took the skills and knowledge he had as an assassin and hammered it into the heads of elite Mafia members in the underground training facility: Gin, Kyouka Izumi, and many, many others. Those who studied under him, without exception, became first-class assassins during their brief training.

Verlaine never opened up to anyone. He never told his pupils or even the Port Mafia’s boss why he decided to continue living underground, despite how inconvenient it was. When he wasn’t training his pupils, he was sitting in his rattan chair as if he were waiting for something. However, he never told anyone what he was waiting for. If someone ever pestered him for an answer, he would simply reply, “A storm.” But no one knew what that meant.

Six years had passed, and now Verlaine was an essential figure in the Mafia and one of its five executives.

But nothing had changed. He still continued to sit in his rattan chair, quietly waiting for the storm.

Shirase had made his way over to London. After living in the slums for a few years, a strange turn of events led him to establish and run a skilled organization called the Stray Sheep.

“I wanna go back to Yokohama,” he would sometimes say, given how intense things were for the skilled community—but it appeared it would be a while before fate released him from European lands.

Piano Man, Albatross, Doc, Iceman, and Lippmann were buried in a well-kept graveyard near the mountains. Their graves were never without flowers.

And yet the five of them were merely a small fraction of the long list of casualties suffered in the Port Mafia—a criminal organization tinged with death and violence. And eventually, they, too, would be forgotten, buried under the ever-growing list of names and the dust of history.

Adam continued tirelessly solving difficult cases and was acknowledged for his countless achievements. However, he still hadn’t fulfilled his dream of starting an all-android detective agency because everyone always told him they didn’t think it was a good idea and stopped him.

But due to his achievements, another autonomous humanoid supercomputer was created: a female AI known as Eve Frankenstein. She had a fierce personality and clearly wore the pants in the relationship, but that didn’t stop them from working together as partners on cases.

As for Chuuya…

Chuuya was riding his motorcycle between rows of buildings. He was heading west on a path to the San’in region.

Small wooden buildings lined each side of the road. It was a street completely disconnected from the bloody world of the Port Mafia. People ambled down the street; white steam rose from a distant building, indicating that there was a hot spring district up ahead.

Chuuya rode his motorcycle down the paved road until he eventually stopped by a black vehicle. After the car’s window rolled down, one of the two people inside called out to him.

“Chuuya, sir, thank you for coming,” said the female driver, a member of the Mafia with honey-colored hair. “The target hasn’t moved.”

“All right.”

He looked in the direction the car was facing where a Western-style one-story wooden building quietly stood.

There was absolutely nothing striking about it. A large yet quiet house, it had an old, beat-up sign in the front with the word CLINIC written on it. There didn’t seem to be any patients coming or going.

“Chuuya,” said the other person in the car: a dark-haired youth in a black overcoat who fixed Chuuya with a piercing gaze. “The boss informed me this was a top secret surveillance mission. Is our target really that dangerous?”

“Pretty sure ya got your answer right there,” replied Chuuya, still straddling his motorcycle. “It’s top secret.”

The young man with the piercing gaze closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I apologize for my presumptuous behavior.”

“I’ll take things from here. You’re free to leave,” said Chuuya. “Thanks for comin’ all this way.”

“Thank you.” The young man robed in black bowed his head once more, his face expressionless. “Take us home, Higuchi.”

“Y-yes, sir!”

The female mafioso nervously started the engine, then drove off into the distance. Chuuya continued to stare at the house up ahead in silence.

His reputation within the Mafia went through the roof following the King of Assassins Incident. After all, he defeated Guivre, a creature that almost wiped out the entire Mafia, on his own. There wasn’t a soul in the organization who didn’t know his name, and he now commanded many subordinates. However, Chuuya never spoke about his past or who he really was to his fellow mafiosi.

Dazai was right. After the command log etched inside Chuuya was initialized, there was no longer any way of knowing whether he was human. Artificial skill-derived life-forms were created by transferring the original skill user’s cells to a singularity life-form. In Chuuya’s case, that was Arahabaki. That was why artificial skill-derived life-forms were physically no different from humans, and there was no way to differentiate between them through any medical examination. Not even the greatest doctors and biological engineers in Japan could tell if he was merely an artificial being installed with a personality.

But that didn’t really bother Chuuya.

Only he could decide when to initialize his command sequence. Even if he could go back in time, he wouldn’t change a thing. This body was his. The mind and body couldn’t be split apart. His nails, hair, and even the little scars on his body were his, too.

Chuuya took off one of his leather riding gloves and gazed at his hand. This is my hand, he thought.

These fingerprints, the faintly protruding blue veins, the wrinkles carved into his palm—even the small scar on the base of his wrist…

It was a small, darkened stab wound. Scars like this one covered his body, which was only natural for someone who’d been through as many battles as he had.

Chuuya quietly stared at the scar. He couldn’t remember where it was from. It was actually rare to have a small cut like this, since he could stop any attack through manipulating its gravity. Most of the scars covering his body had been left by powerful skills or surprise attacks, like when Shirase stabbed him in the back. Chuuya believed these small scars were emblems indicating who he really was.

All of a sudden, he felt a presence and looked up. Someone from the house he was surveilling had come outside.

He saw a man on the other side of the tree out front—a middle-aged man with glasses and hunched shoulders. He was wearing a white coat; it looked like he was still a practicing physician.

A woman who appeared to be of the same age and occupation came out after him, dressed in a kimono. After walking by the juniper in the front yard, she took a seat on the wooden bench next to it.

This was the target the Mafia had been after for so long. It took years just to find where they lived without getting caught. The Mafia’s boss had told Chuuya all about these people before he came.

The target was this physician who had been living in this region for years and his wife. The husband was now a kindhearted doctor, but that wasn’t the whole story. He was ex-military, and he held a post on the town council as well. Put simply, he was not someone who could be taken lightly. The wife herself came from a long lineage of warriors and had all the etiquette and decorum of the upper echelons of society.

They were childless. They had a son long ago, but he passed away. That much was in the records.

He got caught up in a war. He was an unruly child who got in a fight in elementary school with his classmate and ended up beating a kid four years older than him. The classmate insulted his parents, which started the fight. He didn’t back down, even though the classmate was older and was using a pencil as a weapon. When the classmate charged at him, he didn’t flinch, but instead threw a punch.

When Mori told Chuuya this, he added the following explanation as well:

Pencil lead is made of solid carbon, which is mostly unreactive, so it doesn’t change much even after piercing the skin and entering the body. That is why the lead from a pencil stab often remains in the body for years.

That boy had been stabbed in the base of his right wrist.

The exact same place as the darkened stab wound on Chuuya’s right wrist.

Chuuya watched the couple. The husband took out a persimmon bundled in a Japanese wrapping cloth. After handing half to his wife, they began enjoying the snack together. The wife took out a canteen filled with tea and poured some into a cup while saying something to her husband. He laughed. Chuuya couldn’t hear what they were talking about.

He thought back to the boss’s explanation. The bodies of artificial skill-derived life-forms were made from the cells of the original skill user. As a result, there was no way to surgically tell them apart. Nevertheless, there were differences, given they lived separate lives. Various physical disparities were possible—scars, for example.

The original human might have a childhood scar obtained long before his skill was turned into a singularity. Since the artificial skill-derived life-form would have been created after that, he wouldn’t have that same scar.

Chuuya stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against his motorcycle, idly staring into space—not necessarily at the couple. He stood by the road in the distance separated by a group of passing cars. There was no telling how long he stood there watching.

Before long, the couple finished their persimmon and went back inside the clinic. Chuuya turned away from them, hopped on his bike, and made a phone call.

“Boss, I finished checking. I’m coming back now,” he reported.

“Are you sure you don’t want to meet them?” asked Mori with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “We finally found them to celebrate your promotion to executive.”

“It’s okay. The Port Mafia is my family now,” Chuuya replied without even blinking.

He revved his engine once again.

A dry, cool breeze brushed against his cheeks before drifting off into the faraway sky. Chuuya looked back as if he were following the wind with his eyes and turned his gaze toward the heavens.

He quietly stared up at the vast blue firmament. He was looking at something—something that was once beneath this sky—something that was about to happen.

Chuuya found something in that sky. His eyes conveyed as much. He then said into his phone:

“Boss… Thank you.”

He could sense Mori smiling on the other side of the line.

After hanging up, Chuuya put on his helmet and started riding down the street from which he came, facing forward and never looking back again. His motorcycle faded into the vast clear-blue sky, gradually shrinking until he could be seen no more.

End