Chapter 14

Ango Sakaguchi heard Osamu Dazai sigh.

"Though I really don't want to get involved in your private affairs, would you like to make a commission?" There was a subtle note in Dazai's voice. "If you do, I can help you, with the commission made in Ango Sakaguchi's personal name."

"Remember to pay triple the commission fee." Dazai leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. "After all, Kamiki isn't an ordinary person."

Chapter 14

At the Armed Detective Agency, Osamu Dazai stood up and headed out. Beside him, Doppo Kunikida, who had been writing furiously, turned his head and followed Dazai with his eyes. He put down his pen and asked,

"Dazai, where are you going?"

To be honest, Kunikida had been a little surprised.

After the Tatsuhiko Shibusawa incident, everyone at the Armed Detective Agency had relaxed somewhat following the terrible upheaval. Apart from Kunikida, who was sorting through documents, everyone else was slacking off over coffee at the café downstairs. Yet Dazai, who was usually the first to skip work, hadn't gone down. Instead, he had sat in his chair as though waiting for something.

Only after receiving a phone call just now had Dazai gotten up to leave, as though a switch had been flipped.

"Why, I'm taking a commission as a good person, of course." Dazai snapped his fingers, a meaningful smile in his brown eyes. "A certain hypocrite keeps muttering about how to be a good person, but all he does is talk. And I, his great senior, shall point him in the right direction!"

"Goodbye."

Kunikida watched Dazai walk out of the Armed Detective Agency's doors and blinked. Then he stiffly turned back to stare at his computer screen.

"...Dazai? A good person?"

"Is he daydreaming?"

Dazai, who didn't care in the slightest what Kunikida said, left the agency. He pressed a button on his earpiece, and a moment later the call connected to Ango Sakaguchi.

Sakaguchi was standing in the Armed Detective Agency's records room. He swiped his ID card, and the doors opened once his identity was confirmed. He entered the archives and walked toward the shelves holding records from fifteen years ago. Looking at the rows of dusty files, he began searching through them one by one.

"How is it going?" Dazai asked.

"I'm in the archives. The records from fifteen years ago are all here. Dazai, are you sure there'll be a clue in them?"

"Of course." Dazai's lips curved slightly.

Sakaguchi opened a file and looked at its contents. "But there are too many files, and they're all over the place. I've already looked through just about every document on the explosion in the French Concession back then. If there were any records on Yūhaku, I shouldn't have missed them."

"No, the records I want you to look for aren't about Kamiki."

"Hm?"

Dazai slipped one hand into his coat pocket. "Tell me, how did Kamiki survive?"

"His ability, Survival With No Hope, unleashed its strongest defensive power when he was gravely injured. That's how he survived."

"And after that?" Dazai lowered his voice, its deep tone inexplicably reminding Sakaguchi of the time when Dazai was still in the Port Mafia, a born mafioso who had been the youngest executive in its history.

"Ango, Kamiki Yūhaku was gravely injured. There's no way he could have gotten out of those ruins on his own. He's not like Chuuya. Who saved him?"

Sakaguchi's eyes widened slightly. "You mean someone went deep into the ruins back then and rescued Yūhaku? The government didn't search for survivors, but it certainly wouldn't have allowed ordinary people to enter those ruins as they pleased. That means the person who saved Yūhaku might have been a government insider fifteen years ago!"

"Exactly." Dazai pressed a hand to his earpiece. "There's a five-year gap between fifteen years ago and when Kamiki joined the Port Mafia. Where he was during those five years may very well be our slim chance of saving him."

"I understand." Sakaguchi quickly flipped through the files in his hands.

As an assistant counselor in the Armed Detective Agency and an intelligence agent who had once gone undercover in the Port Mafia, Sakaguchi was more than capable of finding what he wanted in that jumble of disorganized information.

Even though Dazai had never forgiven Sakaguchi, he still acknowledged how capable he was.

Dazai ended the call with Sakaguchi and breathed out. Then, as if helpless, he tapped his earpiece with his index finger again.

That guy definitely wouldn't just stand by and do nothing.

After all, he's a slug with a heart full of kindness, despite being in the Port Mafia.

"Achoo." Chūya Nakahara sneezed.

After sneezing, Nakahara looked up to find Mori Ougai and Kōyō Ozaki, who were sitting beside him, both looking straight at him in surprise.

"Kōyō? Boss?"

"No, it's nothing." Mori coughed and looked away. "In any case, thank you for your efforts, Chuuya. Thanks to you, the situation didn't get out of hand this time."

Nakahara listened to Mori, then stood up after a moment. "Boss, may I request some time to act on my own?"

"Act on your own?" Mori looked at Nakahara. "May I ask how much freedom you have in mind, Chuuya?"

Nakahara fell silent. He wasn't really sure how to put it himself.

After the white fog dispersed, Nakahara had tried to find Kamiki Yūhaku, but without success. Kamiki wasn't at any of the locations they had found during their earlier investigation, and there wasn't a single crow perched in the trees. In the end, Nakahara returned to the Port Mafia first to report on the situation.

But Kamiki's situation had been etched deeply into his heart.

The human experiments in the French Concession. The only success besides himself. Years of continuous, cruel harm, to the point where he had even lost his sense of pain. Then, at the very end, he had been gravely injured by Nakahara when he lost control, and left trapped in the ruins, waiting in despair.

Rationally, Nakahara knew he shouldn't blame himself, but he couldn't help dwelling on it.

If he hadn't left so quickly back then, if he hadn't been taken away by the Sheep and had instead stayed in those ruins a little longer, would he have heard Kamiki's cries for help? Could he have taken him out of that hell?

But there were no ifs in this world, and he could only come to terms with those indescribable feelings himself.

"Is this about Kamiki?" Mori suddenly asked.

Nakahara froze for a moment, then nodded. "Yes."

"So you found out too, Chuuya—that Kamiki was a test subject for military artificial abilities, just like you." Mori rested his arms on the conference table and gently tapped its surface with his knuckles. "I won't stop you. That would only create a rift between us. But before you leave, Chuuya, I have one warning for you."

"Please, go ahead."

"Kamiki is very dangerous. His return to Yokohama this time is about far more than simply taking the opportunity to get back at the Port Mafia."

Nakahara nodded. "I understand."

"Chuuya?"

"Perhaps I can more or less understand what he's thinking," Nakahara said. "Whenever he's compared with me, whether it's Kamiki himself or someone else, they all use the same word: lucky. In their eyes, I'm the lucky one. That's enough to show how hard everything Kamiki went through must have been."

"His life has turned out so badly. Even if he's being selfish, that's only natural."

Nakahara closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. He bowed to Mori, then turned to leave. "I'm sorry, Boss."

"At the very least, right now, I want to be there with him."

After leaving the conference room, Nakahara stood by a window and looked up at the sky outside. A moment later, the phone in his pocket rang. He pulled it out, only to frown.

The caller displayed on the screen was: Mackerel.

Dazai?

Nakahara turned and left the Mafia building, answering the call as he stepped outside. "Hello? Dazai?"

"Don't say anything yet, Chuuya. I'm only going to ask one question." Dazai's voice came through the receiver, slightly distorted. "Do you want to save Kamiki?"

Nakahara came to an abrupt halt. "What did you say?"

"Answer me. Do you or don't you?"

"I do." Nakahara started walking again. "What do you know?"

Unsurprised, Dazai clicked his tongue. "If you're at the Port Mafia right now, stop walking. You need to go back to headquarters and look through the records."

"Huh?" Nakahara frowned. "Are you sure you're not lying to trick me into giving you important information?"

"Of course not. Though I'd love to do that, I'm dealing with something serious right now," Dazai said. "Investigate the records from nine years ago. Look into every job Kamiki handled during the first two or three years after he joined the Port Mafia."

"But why?"

"Because something doesn't add up." Dazai sighed, looking exhausted at the prospect of explaining. "Did you know Kamiki went to France during these past four years?"

Nakahara said, "...I do now."

"Kamiki did quite a few big things in France. Using the resources of the Rats in the House of the Dead, he spent three years operating undercover and destroyed every organization based in France that was involved in human experimentation. The groups that took part in the French Concession experiments back then were reduced to ruins."

"So?"

"So how could someone who uprooted France's human experimentation organizations in three years fail to find any information about the French Concession for five whole years?" There was mockery in Dazai's voice. "He definitely didn't join the Port Mafia to get information about what happened in the French Concession back then. At least, not at first."

Nakahara understood what Dazai meant. "You want me to find out why Kamiki joined the Port Mafia?"

"Exactly."

"I understand." Nakahara turned around and headed back. "If this can save him."

Meanwhile, at a special research facility unknown to anyone, Kamiki Yūhaku stood outside the door with a suitcase in hand, his red eyes fixed on the wall before him.

After a fingerprint scan, the metal doors before him slowly opened, revealing a person standing inside, their face concealed by protective gear.