Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 - Chapter Pr

On Life’s vast ocean diversely we sail,

Reason the card, but Passion is the gale.

—Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man”

Prologue

The nighttime forest veils wickedness.

No matter the country or era, there was never a time when evil didn’t lurk in the woods at night. The form it takes, however, is always changing. One night, it could emerge as a darkness so thick you might not even be able to see your own two feet. And on other nights, it could turn your path home into a seemingly endless maze. It could even be the fangs and saliva of a starving beast.

This forest’s wicked form that day was light.

An orange light. An ominous luster wiggling to the beat of a song that couldn’t be heard.

Fire.

A hole in the night that all living creatures naturally feared: a forest fire.

The crackling of the trees as they burned sounded like guttural screams.

Fires are not fussy like people. They devour everything in their path without a single complaint, slowly fattening themselves up with wickedness.

This forest would likely be reduced to mundane black ash by sunrise. That was how the forest was going to die. It would be a good hundred years or so until it came back. The culprit—the one who dealt the final blow—was lying at the center of the flames.

It was the remains of a passenger airplane. The engine’s fans were still spinning—proof it had crashed just a short while ago. The body was bent straight down the middle, and one of its wings stuck out of the ground like a gravestone.

Nearby villagers began gathering to put out the fire and rescue any survivors, but their faces were immediately tinged with despair. No one could have survived this crash. The aircraft’s torn body had been blackened by the heat; the metal craft painfully shrieked. It appeared that the fire had already made its way inside. Simply walking through the cabin would surely melt one’s shoes into the floor within seconds.

Overcome with hopelessness, the villagers started examining what was left of the aircraft. Then a boy approached the wreckage. He was from a nearby village and had a hatchet for felling lumber in his hands; he’d brought it with him to chop down however many trees it took to keep the fire from spreading. A mere child like him, however, could only attempt to mimic what the adults were doing. His tiny hatchet wasn’t even sharp or sturdy enough to chop down his grandfather’s bonsai tree.

Nevertheless, the young boy approached the downed aircraft. There might be survivors. The adults would surely praise him if he saved someone. He imagined himself being lauded a hero, and his heart began to race.

But his ambitions proved deadly. One of the iron doors, which somehow managed to remain attached to the wreckage, let out a metallic clank before snapping off and flying straight toward the boy. Nobody present would have been able to make it in time to save him, even if they tried. This was a heavy, sturdy door rapidly descending from a high altitude. A villager screamed as the door crushed the child’s head like putty—

—or at least, that was what everyone thought was going to happen.

A hand grabbed the iron door, stopping it. But it wasn’t a villager’s hand. It belonged to someone within the aircraft.

“Is this the place? Finally,” that person said calmly.

A tall man wearing a blue business suit appeared. He was European, but his age was hard to place; he was most likely in his twenties or thirties. His gaze was distant in spite of the roaring flames surrounding him. Unlike the devastated aircraft from which he’d emerged, he didn’t have a scratch on him.

“I had no idea commercial airplanes experienced so much turbulence when they landed. But as they say: Everything is an experience, and experience is everything. Are you okay?” he asked the boy. “No need to thank me. Saving and protecting humans is my duty. At any rate, you’re bound to get hurt hanging around a place like this. It doesn’t help that these doors just seem to pop off, either.”

“Huh…?”

While the child’s eyes rolled back, the man in blue hopped out of the airplane and landed on the ground before slowly checking his surroundings.

“Hmm. This was not in my external memory database. Do all airports in Japan have this many trees? Now, I understand that sixty-seven percent of this country’s total land area is forested, but choosing to build an airport here seems a bit illogical. There aren’t even any roads. I suppose that means I will have to head to my destination on foot. Humans make absolutely no sense to me sometimes.”

The man wore a serious expression as he dubiously cocked his head to one side.

“Um…s-sir…,” the boy mumbled timidly. “Just who are you…?”

“Ah, my apologies. Human society considers it rude to not introduce oneself, yes?” The man slipped a black badge out of his breast pocket. The boy couldn’t read the silver text in the center.

“I am a detective, property of Europole. My model number is 98F7819-5. I was created by skill user engineer Dr. Wollstonecraft and am the first autonomous humanoid supercomputer for law enforcement use. My code name is Adam—Adam Frankenstein. It was a pleasure meeting you. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a mission to attend to.”

The young man bowed and began to leave until he came to a sudden stop.

“Oh, right,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “Do you know someone by the name of Chuuya Nakahara?”