Chapter 2

Kamiki Yūhaku stood up and stepped in front of the man. He waved an arm, and the crow cawed once before quickly flying out of the shelter.

"I'll go," Kamiki Yūhaku said. "My Little Crow is amazing. He'll find them in no time."

"Huh?" The man froze for a moment before saying, "I'm sorry to trouble you. My child was the one who caused this mess."

But Kamiki Yūhaku noticed that the man had been relieved to learn he didn't have to leave. His tightly clenched hands had relaxed, and although he apologized for the trouble, he didn't dare look at Kamiki Yūhaku.

The military police wouldn't issue a warning on this scale lightly. Since they had issued one, it meant a disaster capable of killing many people was going to happen outside.

That was why he didn't dare go out. He was afraid of dying.

"It's all right." Kamiki Yūhaku brushed the dust off his coat, the corners of his mouth lifting in a gentle smile. "Well then, goodbye."

Only after Kamiki Yūhaku left the shelter did the man breathe a sigh of relief. He picked up his child, and he and the child's mother walked to the back with their heads lowered, avoiding everyone else's gazes.

As soon as Kamiki Yūhaku stepped out of the shelter, he heard a caw. He looked up to see the crow circling overhead.

"Good Little Crow. Take me to find them."

The crow swiftly flew off, moving neither too fast nor too slowly, at just the right speed for Kamiki Yūhaku to keep up. Kamiki Yūhaku wasn't anxious either; he simply went wherever the crow flew. The streets were deserted all the way, with all transportation and stations shut down. Everything looked terribly empty and desolate.

"It's so far." Kamiki Yūhaku looked at the bird overhead as he ran. "How much longer?"

The crow cawed twice, then descended and perched on Kamiki Yūhaku's shoulder, pecking at his own feathers. Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head. "We're here?"

Just then, Kamiki Yūhaku heard a sound, like an airplane's wings cutting through the air. Something enormous seemed to be descending. Kamiki Yūhaku looked up and saw the colossal object in the sky.

Electricity crackled all around the metal aerial fortress as it flickered in and out of view. Whenever it appeared, it looked like a giant whale. It was truly enormous, and it was descending. If it came down, the whole of Yokohama wouldn't be enough to withstand the impact.

"It's huge." Kamiki Yūhaku took two steps back, the white whale reflected in his red eyes. "Is this why the military police issued the warning?"

Suddenly, the crow began to caw. Kamiki Yūhaku tilted his head and looked to the side, just in time to see a girl in a pale yellow dress run out of an alley.

"Mommy!" The girl cried nonstop as she ran, looking for someone she could ask for help. Unfortunately, everyone in the area had been evacuated to the shelters, and there was no one to help her. So she could only keep crying. "Mommy, where are you?"

"Ah, found her."

Kamiki Yūhaku ran toward the girl. At that very moment, the giant whale began to descend faster, directly above her. At the same time, an airplane came hurtling in and, before Kamiki Yūhaku's eyes, slammed into the whale.

The explosion knocked the aerial fortress off course, and it plunged into the sea beside the pier. The tremendous force sent seawater surging inland.

The girl stared in terror at the rushing seawater, unable to make a sound.

From his parachute, Atsushi Nakajima saw the girl on the pier. His eyes widened. "There's someone there! Mr. Dazai! Someone's on the pier!"

"What?"

"Why would anyone still be on the pier at a time like this? The military police should have evacuated everyone."

"No!"

A massive wave swept onto the pier. Atsushi Nakajima descended from the sky, and Osamu Dazai finally arrived as well, but it was already too late. The surging water had completely engulfed the area. A little girl without the strength to resist could only be swept into the sea by a surge of that magnitude.

But now the giant whale had fallen into the sea. No one knew how many whirlpools it had created below, or whether the girl would be torn to pieces by one of them.

"This is awful. I'm soaked through." Just then, an unfamiliar male voice rang out, and everyone present widened their eyes.

As the sea spray cleared, the man's drenched figure appeared before them.

He wore a black coat and even had black gloves on his hands, but his short white hair was wet and plastered to his forehead. The man held up his right hand, a perfectly clean crow perched on his wrist, while his left arm cradled the girl who had been too frightened to scream.

As though he had heard a sound, he raised his head and looked over, and everyone saw his eyes.

They were red, a color that should have looked sharp, yet they weren't frightening in the slightest. They even inspired an unconscious sense of fondness.

"Tch." Looking at him, Osamu Dazai couldn't help clicking his tongue.

"Huh? Mr. Dazai?" Kamiki Yūhaku set the girl down, and the crow flew onto his shoulder. "Long time no see."

"It certainly has been a long time." The corners of Osamu Dazai's mouth curved slightly. "Kamiki."

Chapter 2:

"I thought I'd never see you again," Osamu Dazai said with the hint of a smile. "After all these years, you still have that crow."

"People get attached to familiar things, after all. Even if it's just a crow, you grow fond of him after keeping him for a long time." Kamiki Yūhaku smiled gently.

Osamu Dazai raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly. "Since you already left, why come back?"

"I told you, people get attached to familiar things. I left Yokohama, so sooner or later I'd want to come back and see it." Kamiki Yūhaku looked toward the giant whale that had just crashed to the bottom of the sea. "It looks like I made the right decision. Yokohama really is interesting."

"It's just a little dangerous."

"So even you can be afraid of danger."

"Of course. I value my life." Kamiki Yūhaku smiled. "Since you're here, I'll leave this little girl with you. Her mother is looking for her."

With that, Kamiki Yūhaku turned and left. The crow on his shoulder flapped its wings and took flight. Kamiki Yūhaku's path took him past the other members of the detective agency, but all they heard as he left was Kamiki Yūhaku asking That Crow if he was hungry and wanted something else to eat.

"How strange." Osamu Dazai frowned slightly as he watched Kamiki Yūhaku walk away. "He actually came back?"

"Someone as distinctive as a man who keeps a crow shouldn't have escaped my notice." Doppo Kunikida walked over. "But there's no mention of him in my notebook, and I don't remember him either. Dazai, who is he?"

"It's perfectly normal that you don't know him. Kamiki left Yokohama four years ago," Osamu Dazai answered casually. "If Mr. Mori finds out he's back, will he be too scared to sleep? Oh, thinking about it makes me look forward to it!"

Akiko Yosano was examining Kyōka Izumi's wound. She only looked up when she heard Osamu Dazai mention Mori Ougai. "Was he a colleague of yours?"

"No, we just worked together for a while." Osamu Dazai rubbed his chin, a gleeful smile in his eyes. "So Kamiki wasn't exactly my colleague. He was an intelligence agent."

"The best intelligence agent in all of Yokohama... No, in all of Japan."

Osamu Dazai didn't have many memories of Kamiki Yūhaku. After all, they had belonged to entirely different departments in the Port Mafia. He had only met Kamiki because Kamiki was Ango Sakaguchi's colleague, and every now and then, Ango Sakaguchi would prod him into working, as if he were trying to drag an elephant by hand.

Even so, Kamiki Yūhaku remained unmoved. Every day, aside from letting a flock of crows roam free, he tended flowers and plants with the enthusiasm of a child who hadn't come of age.

But no one would say Kamiki Yūhaku wasn't a qualified intelligence agent. He was an unimaginably outstanding one.

Assassination, infiltration, even communications—he knew every method of obtaining intelligence. It was as though he had been born for the profession. He knew all sorts of things, important or otherwise. Once, Ango Sakaguchi even discovered that he had been rating every Port Mafia member's loyalty to Mori Ougai and had compiled an entire booklet.

Ango Sakaguchi had been so frightened that he burned the booklet on the spot and lectured him for an entire day. That evening at the bar, he poured out his grievances to Dazai and Odasaku, looking for all the world like someone struggling to raise a child.

So, aside from his strange personality and strange interests, he was unquestionably the best intelligence agent.

Of course Mori Ougai wouldn't let such a talented man go, but Kamiki Yūhaku had resigned four years ago.

No one knew what had possessed Kamiki Yūhaku to go to Mori Ougai and resign, as though he had lost his mind. Nor did anyone understand why Mori Ougai had agreed and actually let him leave just like that.

From then on, Kamiki Yūhaku became a legend in the Port Mafia.

He was the only person in the Port Mafia's history to successfully resign from a position it was "impossible to resign from."

Osamu Dazai would never forget a rare gathering a few days before Kamiki Yūhaku left. Ango Sakaguchi had forcibly dragged Kamiki out and confiscated the Port Mafia Ability Illustrated Guide he was working on. Unable to resist, Kamiki had withdrawn into a corner and drawn circles, until Ango Sakaguchi pressed a drink into his hand, pulled him over to the bar, and told him that adults shouldn't be so childish.

At the time, Kamiki Yūhaku had looked at the drink in his glass and said something Dazai still couldn't forget.

"Drinking isn't just for celebrating a reunion. It can also be a way of lamenting a parting."

"Mr. Dazai, you should be careful." Kamiki Yūhaku turned on his swivel chair to face Osamu Dazai, a childlike, innocent smile in his red eyes. "Perhaps this drink will make you lose many important things."

Thinking back on it now, perhaps Kamiki Yūhaku, as an intelligence agent, had already known something then, and that had merely been his final, oblique warning to him about something.

Unfortunately, Osamu Dazai hadn't paid it any mind at the time, and Ango Sakaguchi had suddenly cut in and changed the subject. Kamiki Yūhaku had simply smiled and begun drinking, telling them as he drank that he planned to resign and travel, and even pulling up pictures on his phone to tell them about the local customs and culture.