“Nothing wrong with being weak. Let the tide take you somewhere far away.”
Tanizaki thought back to something a former teacher had once said to him. Just when he lifted his head back up with a wry smirk, the waiter brought their food to the table.
“Sigh. We wasted an entire day for nothing,” muttered Kunikida. “Tanizaki, have whatever you want. I know it’s not enough to pay you back for all that lost time, but tonight’s on me.”
“Hooray!” cheered Dazai.
“I’m not paying for you.”
Kunikida asked the waitress for another glass of sake before facing the table once more.
“By the way, we never got to finish talking about why the detective agency was founded, did we?” Tanizaki commented while picking up a slice of potato with his chopsticks.
“Oh, right…” After taking a taste of his sake, Kunikida let out a deep sigh. “The president rarely talks about his past or himself. He doesn’t give much instruction, either. When the time comes, he’ll tell us how the agency was founded.” Kunikida stared off into space and continued as if he were talking to himself. “I’d love to meet the person who convinced the president to start it.”
Dazai ambiguously smirked. Tanizaki then thought to himself that if it was someone that well acquainted with the agency, then it wouldn’t be a surprise if they had already met the person. Perhaps it was even somebody they knew very well.
“But I bet you everyone’s dying to know. Go ask the boss next time we’re at work, Kunikida.”
“Why me? You do it.”
“All right, let’s all draw slips of paper to deci—”
“I am never drawing lots again.” Kunikida scowled at Dazai.
“How about we play a game where the four of us, including the president, draw lots, and the loser has to tell an embarrassing story from their past? That could work, methinks.”
“Well, ‘methinks’ you need to shut up!” Kunikida yelled. “The only outcome I can see is me telling embarrassing stories about my past alone!”
He tossed back his sake, then lazily drooped his head. Tanizaki slightly bowed when the waitress brought them another dish.
“I ended up somehow helping you avoid taking responsibility today. It’s humiliating. I really thought I had you this time,” groaned Kunikida. “I don’t care how I do it. I just want to win and make you say uncle.”
“Ha-ha. All you had to do was ask, and I’ll say it as many times as you’d like. Uncle. Uncle… Now, I wonder what kind of food awaits us under this lid here,” Dazai said while reaching out for the plate the waitress left.
“By the way, Dazai, you drew a three, the smallest number after mine…which means you’re supposed to bring the new guy on the day of the test.” Tanizaki curiously tilted his head to the side. “Why didn’t you try to avoid doing that, too?”
“Uncle, uncle, uncle. That’s because during the meeting today I felt that Kunikida wasn’t just trying to make me pay for everything I do to him on a daily basis. It was like he also wanted me to learn something during this entrance exam, and, well, you have to show a little gratitude for people’s goodwill every once in a while.”
“Hmph. You’re just the absolute worst,” Kunikida spat before looking away as if to hide his expression.
Dazai dragged the plate closer and reached for the lid. As he glanced toward the back of the pub, he commented, “Huh. I feel like I’ve seen that waitress from somewhere before…”
He removed the lid, which instantly made a clicking sound.
“……Hmm…?”
Underneath was not food, but some sort of bizarre, elaborate contraption and solid fuel made from a claylike putty. Sticking out from the contraption was a fuse with a cord that connected to the lid in Dazai’s hand. Stuck to the back of the lid was a scrap of paper that slowly fluttered down onto the table:
“I said to keep your eyes on me and me alone.”
Wrapped around the rim of the lid was a motion-sensor cable.
“……Uhhh… Is this…what I think it is…? One of those things that goes boom if I pull the lid any more than this…?”
Face still frozen in a smile, Dazai turned to his colleagues. However…
“Huh…? Tanizaki? Kunikida?”
…they were gone before he’d even realized. Sensing danger, they’d bolted out of there like scared rabbits. All that remained were Dazai, who couldn’t even move a muscle, the bomb on a plate, and the other patrons, who began to realize what was happening and started to panic.
“…Uhhh…………”
Dazai pondered, looked up, looked down, thought about the position he was in, then considered what he ought to say next before murmuring feebly:
“…Uncle.”
It was the night before the new employee, Atsushi Nakajima, joined the agency—and the night had only just begun.
THE UNTOLD ORIGINS OF THE DETECTIVE AGENCY
Around that time, there were rumors of a highly competent bodyguard in Yokohama. Give him a sword, and he could kill a hundred villains. Give him a spear, and he could take on an entire army. An all-rounder when it came to martial arts, he had a mastery of everything from iaido to jujutsu. The man was also well educated, spending his days off either reading or playing Go. Levelheaded and calm when it came to work, he always took pains to protect his client with a sort of lupine composure. If one had to name a flaw, it would be that he never worked with others on the job and trusted no one.
In short, a lone wolf.
He kept to himself to such an extreme degree that it made people think, That guy doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever working with a partner, much less as their boss.
An untamable wolf with silver hair…
His name—Yukichi Fukuzawa.
This brief tale is a record of one man’s struggle, of his growth—
—and of parenting.
Fukuzawa looked extremely surly that day. The weekend crowd rolled back like the tide as he strode down the avenue. Even cars stopped as he walked across the pedestrian crossing, even though their light was green. All of this was due to the sullen aura radiating from his expression.
However, he wasn’t exactly in a bad mood. He was drowning in self-loathing. His client had been assassinated, and it was all very sudden. As a bodyguard, Fukuzawa had two main types of work: contract jobs where he would provide safe guidance during times of peace while rushing over to help during emergencies, and one-off bodyguard gigs protecting someone or something for a day. The client killed this morning was from a regular contract deal. She was a certain company’s president who he’d sworn to guard only a few days prior.
They had never talked outside of work. Fukuzawa made it a point to avoid getting personally involved with his clients, so he didn’t know anything about her as an individual, nor did he have any inclination to. However, he was once asked if he wanted to become a full-time guard. Hating the idea of working for a specific company and having subordinates and colleagues made it easy for Fukuzawa to instantly decline the offer. Nevertheless, if he had stayed by her side as her personal guard, then perhaps he could have changed her fate.
From what he heard, the assassin pushed the president out of her office window earlier that morning. There was already proof who did it, which led to the perpetrator’s swift arrest.
Fukuzawa arrived at said location, a reddish-brown brick building relatively close to the harbor. The structure stood on top of a slope and seemed fairly sturdy for such an old building. As he entered, he saw yellow crime-scene tape surrounding the ground right under the president’s office.
The wind was strong that day, causing the tape to flutter in the wind. Fukuzawa averted his gaze. While the victim’s body had already been taken away for examination, there was no hiding the enormous bloodstain on the ground. Fukuzawa checked his emotions at the door, then passed by the crime scene, walking under a sign that said S&K CORPORATION. Following that, he got on the elevator to the president’s room.
/> “Hey, thanks for coming all this way. If you could give me just a minute, I’ll be finished here shortly.”
In the president’s office was the secretary wrestling what appeared to be a pile of documents—not something one would expect to see where a murder just took place. The office was big enough to fit around thirty people if they were squeezed in tight. But instead of people, the place was crammed with documents. The desk and floor were drowning in a sea of paper with almost no sign of what they once were. They all appeared to be important documents as well. The secretary, a sickly-looking man dressed in a black coat and a crimson necktie, was lining up some of the papers across the room. He stared at the field of paper, pulled a few files out, and returned them to the bookshelf before lining up some more documents.
“What are you doing?” Fukuzawa naturally asked.
“See these documents here? I’m sorting them,” the pallid man replied. “Because I’m the only one familiar with them.”
It was hardly a serviceable explanation, and Fukuzawa was not any closer to understanding. But, well, he figured it had something to do with the man’s job. Whether sorting documents on the day your boss was killed was disrespectful or simply good work ethic was something Fukuzawa couldn’t decide, but it reminded him that a horrific event had just occurred.
“I am terribly sorry for your loss.” Fukuzawa bowed. “We lost a great person today… I heard she was pushed out this window here?”
The president’s office boasted views of the city of Yokohama. The wide window she was allegedly pushed out of was currently closed.
“It was a professional hit.” The secretary’s gloomy expression turned even more fraught. “The president’s sudden death is a matter of great regret for the company. She was something of a mentor or a governess to me, having plucked me from my former job and made me who I am today. I believe the best we could do for her is uncover the truth and bring the criminal to justice.”
The secretary indicated the room next door with his gaze.
“The assassin has already been captured. He was caught by one of the guards on the first floor when trying to escape after the murder and is currently being held in the room next door. Forensics checked his fingerprints against the criminal database and discovered they matched those found on the back of the president’s clothes.”
“What?” Fukuzawa uttered in astonishment. “Is the suspect still next door?”
“He’s very quiet, so quiet you might think he was sleeping. Almost as if he’s given up.”
There was a reason why Fukuzawa was so surprised. Yokohama assassins were extremely dangerous compared with other cities. Yokohama, the city of demons, had an influx of military parties from around the world working together after the previous war. In the name of governance, they waved around their extraterritorial rights, and each created their own autonomous region as they slowly encroached on Yokohama territory. Therefore, Yokohama was gradually turning into a lawless district even worse than it had been during wartime. The security forces—the so-called city police—were somehow still functioning, but the military police and coast guard, among others, were essentially inoperative. Yokohama was now a lawbreaker’s paradise and a melting pot for criminals, murderers, illegal foreign capital, and rival underground organizations.
To make matters worse, there were even skill users, whom Fukuzawa dealt with on a daily basis. Nevertheless, if there was a hit man who killed the president of a major corporation in Yokohama, anyone would naturally consider the possibility of it being a skill user.
A small number of people existed in this world with unusual, paranormal abilities.
The average person would typically never even come into contact with a skill user, hence why such individuals were considered nothing more than rumors or urban legends. However, bodyguards for important people, such as Fukuzawa, were very familiar with them, along with the crimes they committed. While Fukuzawa was a master of the martial arts, he was not a skill user. Whether he would be able to defeat a professional assassin unscathed would be solely dependent on the flow of battle. What alarmed him, though, was the thought that the assassin might be a skill user. If he was, then tying him up with a little rope in the room next door would hardly be of any use. It would be like storing a highly powerful explosive.
“I would like to see the assassin.”
“Of course. Be my guest.”
Right as Fukuzawa was about to take a step toward the room next door…
“You say, ‘Be my guest,’ but…”
There was no path forward—literally. Around 95 percent of the ground leading to the room next door was monopolized by the neatly stacked, organized documents. No human would be able to walk through this. This was a job for some sort of eight-legged rescue-bot.
“Mind if I move some of these?” Fukuzawa asked, pointing at the documents.
“Oh! Stop! Don’t touch them!”
But he was immediately denied by the secretary, who raised his voice for the first time since they had met.
“The future of the company depends on these extremely important documents! A single print streak could hurt the company down the line. I don’t even want to think about losing any of them! Please find a way past them without touching or shifting them! I know someone as talented as you can do it!”
Fukuzawa stopped just short of uttering, “Uh… Excuse me?” It wasn’t a matter of whether he could do it. Fukuzawa was a martial artist, not an acrobat. The only open spots on the floor were narrower than the width of his foot.
“Out of curiosity…why are you stacking the papers all around the room like this?”
“A legitimate question. Allow me to answer. I believe that the assassin’s objective was to steal or perhaps destroy these important documents. My theory is that some criminals sneaked in to get their hands on these files and put us out of business, but someone caught them—the president. Therefore, they had to kill her to keep her quiet. That’s why I have to check everything.”
It made sense. The president’s office wouldn’t be a very convenient place to assassinate the company’s boss. There were guards, and the assassin would draw suspicion. But it would make logical sense if the objective was not the president’s life but the documents in her office. It would only be natural for the secretary to want to look over the documents immediately if they were actually the motive.
“How about returning some of the files to the shelf for a moment so I can get by?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The secretary shook his head. “Every file you see here was purposely lined up in a specific way, which is important in finding out what the criminal was after. By date, by department, by importance… The room itself is a part of the puzzle as well. I learned this technique before the president took me in, and I am the only one in the company who can do this. There are rules for putting the documents back on the shelf as well, and if we break those rules even once, it takes us one step further from the truth behind the president’s murder.”
Understandable—but at the same time, incomprehensible. Regardless, the secretary’s expression was dead serious, so Fukuzawa was more worried about causing trouble by moving the documents, rather than the reasoning behind it. He felt like an amateur, knowing nothing about how companies worked. He couldn’t even imagine becoming the president of an organization and putting so much effort into paperwork, human affairs, and contracts. But if a specialist in the field claimed that this was how things had to be done, then perhaps he was right.
Fukuzawa was never even planning on objecting. He was the one at fault, after all. Had he known his client was in danger and protected her, then this tragedy would have never occurred, and the secretary would have never been painstakingly lining up documents and looking through them with such desperation. The secretary was fulfilling his duty, and therefore, Fukuzawa had no choice but to keep his mouth shut and fulfill his own.
It was around five steps to the door to the adjacent room by Fukuzawa’
s quick eyeball estimation. Given all the legwork he was used to, he could perhaps make it in two steps. One step would be halfway to the door, while the other one would have him landing right in front of it. Unfortunately, he would undoubtedly trample some life-changing documents this way. His first step would most likely rip the paper in half, which would only serve as another blot on his record as a bodyguard.
Fukuzawa decided to first retreat to the office entrance before tensing his muscles and leaping forward. His first step landed him on a decoration on the bookshelf lined up against the wall. From there, he used the vaguely dome-shaped ornament along with his momentum to leap once more. He landed with only his hands on the guest chair slightly away from the door before coming to a complete stop. He was holding himself with only his arms and keeping his trunk from even slightly shaking, which displayed a sense of balance that even masters of the martial arts rarely possessed. From there, Fukuzawa slowly stretched out, placing his toes in the space between the nearby piles of documents. After that, he used one leg and one arm to keep balance while he stretched for the door. When he grabbed on to the doorknob, he held it like a jujutsu practitioner reaching around his opponent to grip the back of his collar. He then turned the knob with only the strength of his fingers. After making sure the door was just barely open, he used the doorknob to support himself before lunging off the chair. Fukuzawa swiftly landed with both feet on the floor in the room next door so he could slide in through the slight crack he created, and he hooked a finger on the door frame to keep himself from falling over backward. And like that, he retired from the office while not even moving a single document.
“Wow!” exclaimed the secretary in the background.
That wasn’t “wow”-worthy, Fukuzawa thought; he’d felt a slight tingle go down his spine when he landed on the chair. Despite being indifferent to what others thought of him, it would still be somewhat frustrating to mess up and ruin one’s reputation due to something so ridiculous. At any rate, he was able to make it to the next room over.
The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency Page 6
