Chapter 11

Back then, the Special Division for Unusual Powers had released Tatsuhiko Shibusawa to stop the Dragon Head Conflict. But Shibusawa had done nothing to stop it, instead pushing the conflict to the brink of spiraling out of control. In the end, countless innocent people died before Double Black brought it to a halt.

Yet the Special Division for Unusual Powers had done nothing to deal with Shibusawa, the man responsible. Because his ability was the best weapon for stopping a large-scale ability war, they had even protected him in secret. No matter how much trouble Shibusawa caused abroad, they ignored it and even helped him cover up the evidence.

Now that Tatsuhiko Shibusawa had brought trouble to their own doorstep, they finally knew fear.

But Chūya Nakahara had still rushed to the Special Division for Unusual Powers at once, both for Yokohama and for that person.

"You really want to hire me?" Inside the Armed Detective Agency, Chūya Nakahara glared at Ango Sakaguchi. Compared with Kamiki Yūhaku, an intelligence agent who had left his job normally, Sakaguchi, an undercover agent, had indeed left a stronger impression on Chūya. "You want me to help clean up your Armed Detective Agency's mess?"

"This is for Yokohama too," Ango Sakaguchi said seriously.

Chūya Nakahara looked at him before speaking. "Did you know your former colleague came to Yokohama?"

At Chūya Nakahara's words, Ango Sakaguchi visibly froze for a moment. Only after a pause did he nod. "I already saw him while I was in contact with the detective agency."

"Why did he come back to Yokohama?"

"I don't know." Ango Sakaguchi's voice was calm. He tried to hide the tremor in it, but when he spoke, he found he couldn't hide it at all. "Yūhaku doesn't want the Armed Detective Agency to find him, so no one will discover him before he makes his move."

"Good," Chūya Nakahara said. "I can do you this favor, but my payment will be information on Kamiki Yūhaku. Tell me what he went through in the past."

Ango Sakaguchi froze. "Mr. Nakahara?"

"Don't make me repeat myself." Chūya Nakahara looked out at the dark night and white fog, his tone growing more serious. "Neither of us has much time."

Ango Sakaguchi stepped back twice, forgetting that the chair was right behind him. He fell into it, looking utterly despondent.

He thought for a long time before speaking. "Mr. Nakahara, if I tell you, can you stop Yūhaku?"

"Huh? Stop him from what?"

"Stop him from... doing anything beyond standing by and watching." It took Ango Sakaguchi a great deal of courage to say those words. He almost had to grit his teeth to finish the sentence, and pain flashed in his eyes. "Because Yūhaku must know everything, including that Tatsuhiko Shibusawa has come here, but he won't stop him."

"Because once this happens, government departments will definitely be implicated, and may even bear the greatest responsibility. So he'll watch Shibusawa destroy all of Yokohama."

Chūya Nakahara walked over, seized Ango Sakaguchi by the tie, and hauled him up.

"Why? Why would he do something like that?"

"Because he hates the government."

Ango Sakaguchi and Chūya Nakahara stared at each other. Three seconds later, Chūya released Ango's sleeve. Ango coughed twice, then went to the desk nearby and took a file from a drawer. It contained the top-secret documents he had just retrieved from the archives.

"What you want is in here."

Chūya Nakahara took the file envelope, opened it, and pulled out two sheets of paper.

"'Prototype Otsu No. 0' ability fusion file."

Scattered data had been recorded on it, but the more Chūya Nakahara read, the deeper his frown grew. The file did not describe a normal physical examination.

It described ability tests conducted after inflicting pain and injuries on the host.

It listed various grades of injury and levels of ability strength, as well as the cruel injuries repeatedly inflicted to increase that strength.

Chūya Nakahara turned to the second sheet. The next moment, a photograph fell to the floor. He picked it up and saw a child in it.

The child wore white laboratory clothing and had black hair. His red eyes were full of fear.

"This is Kamiki Yūhaku?" Chūya Nakahara looked at the photograph. "His hair was black?"

"Not every test subject was as lucky as you." Ango Sakaguchi lowered his head as he spoke, a hint of guilt in his voice. "Yūhaku's hair was black to begin with. It's white now because the many experiments caused a physical mutation."

"His ability is passive. It can only be triggered when he's injured, so the researchers kept inflicting wounds on him to keep his ability activated. That way, they could test its state and determine its level."

Chūya Nakahara clenched his hand, crumpling the photograph. "Go on."

"After that went on for so long, Yūhaku's sensitivity to pain was already very, very low."

"...He can't feel pain."

"I noticed it when we were in the Port Mafia, so most of the flowers he grew were thorny plants. He was trying to recover his sense of touch." Ango Sakaguchi had to grit his teeth to get the words out. "But the more he hurt himself, the less pain he could feel. It was a vicious cycle."

Chūya Nakahara threw the documents at Ango Sakaguchi. "So you people caused all this, didn't you? But your government not only never apologized for it, you're even afraid he'll take revenge on you?"

He sneered. "You're less human than the Mafia."

"Of course I know that, but I'm not doing this for myself or for the government."

Ango Sakaguchi said, "Yūhaku will definitely make a move against the government. Once he does, the government will decide to deal with him directly. Mr. Nakahara, even if he's the best intelligence agent in Japan, he can't stand against the entire government alone."

"...At the very least, this time, I want to save him."

"Heh. Hypocrite." Chūya Nakahara turned and left.

But Ango Sakaguchi knew Chūya Nakahara had accepted the request.

Because no matter what, Yokohama was a place they needed to protect.

Watching Chūya Nakahara's retreating figure, Ango Sakaguchi suddenly spoke. "Mr. Nakahara."

"Huh?"

"Do you know how Yūhaku survived?" Ango Sakaguchi said. "His ability is called Survival With No Hope, but it really was that ability that kept him alive. The instant the French Concession exploded, the blast severely injured him, and his ability took effect immediately. His severe injuries made him unleash the strongest ability he'd ever had."

"So he endured the explosion and survived."

"But after the explosion, no one would have gone to save him." Chūya Nakahara coldly cut Ango Sakaguchi off. "He's a person. His life would have ebbed away with his blood."

"He could only lie in the ruins, waiting for someone who could never appear to save him."

"Did any of you go?"

Ango Sakaguchi said nothing.

The government could never have gone there, and Ango Sakaguchi himself had only been ten fifteen years ago. The human experimentation in the French Concession was a stain on the government.

Rather than saving the victims, it was indeed better to let all the evidence turn to ash in the explosion and be done with it once and for all.

"I see." Chūya Nakahara turned and left.

He wondered: How on earth did Kamiki Yūhaku struggle to stay alive?

Gravely wounded and dying, forgotten by everyone, perhaps even buried under the rubble, in pain where no daylight reached.

Waiting to be rescued.

Or to die.

What had he done wrong to suffer something like that?

Chapter 11

Unlike at the Special Division for Unusual Powers, Kamiki Yūhaku was leaning quietly against a wall on a dark street. His injuries weren't serious, but he had let the blood keep flowing from his body, leaving him looking especially haggard.

His face was deathly pale, and even his lips were excessively pale.

But Kamiki Yūhaku was smiling. His smile, utterly indifferent to his surroundings and the situation, made him seem completely out of place.

"You admit it?" Fyodor Dostoevsky said. "It doesn't matter if you don't. Come to think of it, you haven't grown flowers in a long time. I remember that even in the cold northern lands, you liked to keep growing flowering plants, especially thorny ones."

"Fedya is the best intelligence agent." Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head slightly, his voice weak. "But the fact that I like growing flowers hardly counts as intelligence, does it?"

"Of course. The intelligence isn't that you like growing flowers, but why you gave it up." Fyodor Dostoevsky smiled. "What? Did you finally realize it wouldn't bring you any sense of novelty?"

Kamiki Yūhaku smiled and met Fyodor Dostoevsky's gaze, his red eyes full of mockery.

"There was never much novelty in it to begin with."

Kamiki Yūhaku couldn't feel pain. He had known that from the start.

A child had been strapped to an operating table as a test subject, subjected to one horrific experiment after another, forced to watch blades cut into his body again and again, immersed in pain at every moment. Kamiki Yūhaku had only managed to endure it because he couldn't be considered a real child.

But he had still been left with aftereffects.

His originally black hair had turned white overnight, and even the hair that grew afterward had no color at all. The researchers had been overjoyed, thinking his ability had undergone a second increase, but further tests showed that it had not grown any stronger.

Disappointed and resentful, they intensified the experiments, unaware that his sense of pain had vanished along with his hair color.

His ability required blood to flow from his body to activate, and the more blood he shed, the stronger it became. Making him bleed required a sharp object to injure his skin.

And Kamiki Yūhaku had lost the ability to feel pain.

Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Kamiki Yūhaku didn't know.

But he began growing flowers, flowers of every color. Every day he watered and fertilized them, watching the thorns on their stems and trying to touch them with his fingers when no one was around.