“Hey, wait for me!” Mo Murder called, barely managing to catch up with Nagi. He grabbed her shoulder.
“…………”
She turned back to him, but did not answer.
“What's going on?”
“I remember! She said she 'wondered why there was such a thing as fear."'
Mo Murder didn't follow.
“Huh? What?”
“Yes...this was never about whether the killer was scared. It was about the victims. That was the motive! It was the victims who weren't afraid of going somewhere deserted. The killer didn't choose the place; she chose them because of their strength!”
“H-hang on...what are you talking about?”
“And the medical knowledge...the higher education...and more than anything else, she'd need to be able to do the research...it's more than possible!”
She brushed Mo Murder's hand away, turning to leave.
“H-hey, wait! What the...”
“You're no longer a suspect, Sasaki-san.”
“Eh?”
“I'm sure you noticed, but I did suspect you. But not anymore...which means this is goodbye.”
“......?”
She put it so bluntly that it floored him.
“Wh-what cleared me?”
“When I told you to talk to Rika-san, you were flustered. If you were the killer and just acting, you'd have slipped up then. But you remained a nice guy, and were flustered in the normal fashion, and clumsily went about doing something you clearly weren't accustomed to. The killer would have relished the performance. And there was none of the phony behavior you might get with that. You were simply. . . awkward. That was enough for me.”
Mo Murder tried to ask again,
“B-but I'm... I'm...”
“What, you think you could kill someone? That's just an impulse, Sasaki-san. The bug inside you, squirming. You're really a very nice man. You might think that's ridiculous, but you would never kill anyone of your own accord.”
“B-but I. . .” kiIIed your father! he almost blurted, but caught himself just in time.
Nagi grinned at him.
“Bye!” she said, and left with a wave of her hand.
“...w-wait! You...you know who the killer is?! You're going to fight them?!”
There was no answer to his call. Nagi simply walked away, without so much as a glance backwards.
3
“Heh heh heh...”
In the darkness, the Fear Ghoul laughed.
Everything was playing out as she had planned.
Kirima Nagi had clearly figured out that Kisugi Makiko was the killer. Even if she wasn't completely certain, she was clearly eying her as a prime suspect.
But she had expected that. Obviously, she had remembered that when she was still human, she had once let her own fixation slip when talking to that girl. She knew things might turn out this way eventually. Nagi was smart, and the Fear Ghoul never underestimated her opponents.
But...you have no proof, do you, Nagi-chan?
If she went to the police, there was not a single scrap of evidence that could lead to her arrest. Even if there was, she had a large number of policemen under her control.
Nagi did not know that, but even so...judging from her personality, her sense of responsibility, she would come in person. And alone.
“Heh heh heh heh... !”
She was ready for her.
It would not be long before that girl's incomparable strength would be hers to play with...
***
Mo Murder followed Kirima Nagi.
It was easy enough. Nagi might be unusually observant for a child, but no matter how closely she paid attention, she was just a human-Mo Murder was an expert at hiding and tracking, and had been born to do nothing else. If he put his mind to it, he could follow anyone without their ever noticing.
Nagi first went to an apartment building-presumably her home. Mo Murder had no way of knowing, but it was where Sakakibara Gen had lived. He had signed it over to her when he left Japan.
She soon came out again, with a bag over her shoulders.
What’s in the bag? Surely not a weapon of some kind?
Given Nagi's track record so far, it seemed like a distinct possibility. She might really be planning to fight the killer in person.
Fool! What you're about to fight isn't even human!
He longed to tell her. But from a mission standpoint, allowing Nagi to draw the killer out would give him a distinct advantage. From that standpoint, what she was doing was ideal.
But.
But...argh...damn it!
Mo Murder found himself tortured by anxiety he did not fully understand.
Nagi jumped aboard a touring bicycle and sped off at a speed rarely obtained without a motor. She even had her helmet on. Such a well-prepared young woman!
Where’s she headed?
Following behind, Mo Murder desperately tried to determine how Nagi had figured out the killer's identity. No matter how he examined the evidence, he still had no idea who was behind the murders. Perhaps Nagi knew something he didn't, but he had been with her the whole time. He was an assassin, an expert at investigation, yet he had not even grasped the slightest hint of the identity of the killer.
She said the “motive” was key...
He did not understand what she meant. Come to think of it, despite all the people he had murdered, he had never once thought about why people killed each other.
“There's a bug inside you.”
“The bug inside you, squirming.”
Nagi's voice, and the voice of the boy he had killed, echoed together inside his skull.
What bug?!
Everything about those two was different, but they had said almost the same thing.
He did not know it...but one of Kirima Seiichi's books, When a Man Kills a Man, contained the following words:
“Humans do not possess a single, focused will. In their hearts, they have countless bugs, buzzing in all directions. There are times when all these bugs pounce on the same food, but when they are focused on different desires, people take actions that can only be described as incoherent.” Both of them had taken the phrase from that passage.
Why? Why?
Nagi sped through back roads, reaching her destination almost completely unseen.
Once again, Mo Murder was surprised.
This was the hospital where Nagi had once stayed...and where he had attacked the Towa Organization traitor, Scarecrow
Nagi removed her helmet, and sighed.
***
The sky was already dark. The sun had set, and a full moon shone in the sky. Gray clouds, bathing in the moonlight, drifted from the east.
Nagi glanced up at the building above her and then headed around the back. The front entrance already had a sign placed in front of it that read,
“Visiting and examining hours are over for the day.”
At the back entrance she found a security guard and the head of maintenance. They looked surprised to see her.
“Nagi-chan, what brings you here?”
“Nothing major,” she said. She'd been here long enough to know them both.
“Visiting hours are over for the day...”
“Oh, no - -I'm supposed to meet Dr. Kisugi. You mind calling her?”
“No problem,” the guard said, picking up the phone.
“Uh, Dr. Kisugi? Kirima Nagi's here, says she wants to talk to...oh, yes. Okay. Absolutely. Nagi-chan, go right up.”
“Thanks.”
She wrote her name on the night visitors log, putting “private business” down in the “purpose of visit” field, and went inside.
The lights were dimmed in the halls at night, and her footsteps echoed softly.
Nagi knew the layout well. She headed right for the elevators and pushed the call button.
***
Mo Murder watched Nagi step onto the elevator from the shadows, having snuck inside while she spoke with the guard.
What floor is
she going to?
Without a sound, he ran up the stairs near the elevator shaft, stopping when it did.
His eyes paused on the “Psychiatry” sign.
“.........?”
What was she doing here?
Nagi stepped out of the elevator. She crossed the lobby, moving purposefully.
He followed, making himself unnoticeable. Peering ahead, he saw Nagi stop in the smoking comer. There was a woman sitting on the sofa who stood up and called out to Nagi, stopping her. She wore a white coat. Must be a doctor. Probably the “Dr. Kisugi” Nagi had mentioned. In the low lighting, he could not make out her face from this distance.
“------------”
“------------”
They were speaking in low voices -- nothing unusual considering they were in a hospital at night-and even Mo Murder's exceptional hearing could not pick it up. There was some machine humming nearby drowning their voices out.
He wanted to get closer, but there was no way to do so and stay hidden.
Nagi seemed a little worked up. The doctor was shrugging and shaking her head, trying to soothe her.
“------------”
At last Nagi shook her head and came back. They were done talking.
She went past the boiler room where Mo Murder was hiding, and summoned the elevator again.
Mo Murder decided to head for the stairs, keeping ahead of her. But just before he stepped out of his hiding place, he noticed the doctor staring at Nagi.
“-----------?”
Something seemed wrong.
With her watching, he couldn't leave. While he hesitated, Nagi stepped onto the elevator, and it began to descend.
At last the doctor looked away. But what she did next was even stranger.
She ran to the window over the entrance, and opened it. She leaned all the way out, and stared down at the ground below.
Then she came back to the smoking corner, bent over next to the sofa, and reached underneath it. When he saw what she pulled out, Mo Murder was stunned.
It was a rifle. She assembled it quickly, and then carried it back to the window. She pointed the barrel downwards, aiming carefully.
At who? Not at Nagi? !
Any second now, Nagi would be leaving below that window, heading for her bicycle in the parking lot. Right past where the doctor was aiming.
But if she uses a gun here, someone will notice... he started to think, but his experience as an assassin soon told him that this was not the case.
For example, what if the gun was firing tranquilizer darts shaped like small hypodermic needles?
Nagi would collapse if one hit her. The guards would come running at the sound. When they lifted her up, they would see the needle lying next to her, but those were hardly unusual in a hospital. They would ignore it and take her inside to the emergency room. And the doctor who would come to look at her...
“-----------!”
She could pull this off. There were countless ways to kill people. Mo Murder knew that better than anyone.
He could see the doctor's face in the moonlight. Her lips were twisted, smiling.
When he saw that, Mo Murder felt like a steel pole had been rammed through his chest.
“Ack...”
Why had KirimaNagi, who had only known him a few hours, told him with such confidence that he could never kill anyone of his own accord? He had killed countless people.
“Augh...”
Why had Kirima Seiichi been able to make such calm and rational choices even as he lay dying?
“Aaaaaaauugh... !”
Why did this bother him so much, why was he standing in his hiding place panicking, why?
“Aaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugghhhhhh!” he screamed, and threw himself toward the doctor.
Mo Murder was on her before she even turned around. He thrust his knife deep into her mid-section-it was a fatal blow.
Damn it!
His orders were to identify the killer. Killing her was secondary. But he had done it anyway.
He looked up into the doctor's face and lost track of what he was thinking.
“Eh?”
He knew this woman's face. Woman? She didn't look like a woman-she looked like a girl, about eighteen...
And she was grinning at him, even with his knife buried in her. A grin filled with murderous fury.
“Consider this revenge for Scarecrow!” said the Towa Organization's synthetic human, Pigeon, as she coughed up blood. She grabbed Mo Murder's body, holding him immobile.
“………..!”
Mo Murder quickly tried to turn around. But he was too late. Someone else was coming swiftly up behind him, soundlessly.
Unable to dodge, an overhand blow struck Mo Murder from behind, splintering his spine, pulping his organs, and breaking all the way through the other side of his body.
“...guh...gah...?!”
He just managed to turn his head and look behind him. Kisugi Makiko, someone whom he had never met, stared down at him with a look so haughty it was longer human, but that of an all-powerful god.
“Hello, Mo Murder-san...and good-bye,” Fear Ghoul said coldly, and swung Mo Murder's body into the air tossing Pigeon away across the floor.
Then she flung Mo Murder out through the open window.
As he flew through the air, all Mo Murder could think about was the boy he had killed, and his sad face.
“...I warned you, didn't I?”
And then he hit the ground.
***
“Dr. Kisugi just went downstairs,” the young female doctor said when Nagi went to see her. She went outside, where Kisugi Makiko should have been.
But there was no one there.
Nagi never once let her guard down. Her body was tense, well aware that this might be a trap. Though she was alert, what actually happened was still able to stun her.
Someone fell from above, right in front of her.
“----------?!”
He hit the ground, bounced once, and did not move again. A pool of blood formed under him.
He was not bleeding because of the fall. There was a huge hole already opened through the middle of his body.
And his face...
“S-Sasaki-san?!”
Nagi tried to run to him, but someone else hit the ground in front of her.
However, this person did not fall -- instead, she jumped. The person landed from more than ten meters above, with no damage to her legs at all. Upon landing, she stood upright easily.
No human could do that.
It was Kisugi Makiko.
Nagi gasped, and the Fear Ghoul grinned wickedly.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Nagi-chan,” she said, waving her hands as if declaring her innocence. But her hands were covered in blood. The victim lying behind her explained where the blood came from better than any words.
“………...!”
Nagi could feel cold sweat running down her back.
4
“A Scarecrow and a Pigeon? Not the best couple.”
“It's crows that can't stand scarecrows, not pigeons.”
Ultimately, it must have been love.
Pigeon only knew Scarecrow through work, but she loved him -- very much. She did not realize what that love had meant until he betrayed the Towa Organization, and was killed.
Taking care of Scarecrow's office and apartment had been left up to her, and she had cried the whole time. At times she cried so much she wasn't even sure why she was crying. The loss was so overwhelming, she feared that if she faced it directly she might go mad. Looking back on it now, that might have been a better choice than the one she made. Still, she remained alive, and carried out her duties like she always had before.
She was able to do that, but she could not shake the grief. She could not bear the thought that Scarecrow's death had, ultimately, had no real effect on her life. She had loved him so much!
When her duties required her to contact Mo Murder the very man who had killed Scarecrow, she
felt a fiery anger boiling over inside her.
And then...that woman appeared.
“I know how you feel,” she said.
“That's why I'm going to give you a chance.”
She asked what the woman meant.
The woman laughed.
“Is it not a beautiful thing to die in pursuit of revenge?” she asked.
She was terrifyingly good at getting what she wanted by working her way into the weaknesses in people's hearts.
Pigeon had done as the woman said. She had acted as bait, drawn him to her, and used her life to prevent Mo Murder from dodging the woman's attack.
And indeed, she was now dying.
“…………”
The cold hospital floors were sapping all the heat from her body. The world seemed so very cold, and was gradually going dark.
Yet Pigeon did not regret what she had done. She had taken the side of an enemy of the Towa Organization. She was just like him now. She felt completely at peace.
Her face could no longer form expressions properly, but there was an approximation of a smile forming on her lips.
Because there was a shadow standing before her.
Ah...
The shadow wore a dark colored hat and cloak. It looked less like a person and more like a pipe.
Scarecrow...you came!
If she had looked closer, she would have seen that this shadow was shorter than the man she had known, and that its shape differed from his, but she was beyond the ability to make such distinctions.
“…………”
The shadow said nothing.
Tell me, Scarecrow...will I...go to heaven? she asked the shadow, utterly at peace.
But the shadow answered firmly,
“No.” Rather coldly.
“You're going to hell.”
"--------"
Surprised, she was briefly stunned, but soon...
Of course I am... just like you...
She nodded, smiling what must have been the most beautiful smile she had ever produced.
Boogiepop At Dawn Page 12
