Chapter 20

Kamiki Yūhaku made no further moves. The government sent the Military Police to find him, but they could not find where he was hiding.

"Is he really in a place like this?" Doppo Kunikida asked as he followed Osamu Dazai, hopping across the stones in a stream. "Can anyone actually live here?"

"Of course. Intelligence agents encounter all kinds of harsh conditions. If you want the best intelligence, you can't be afraid of any environment." Dazai stepped over branches as he walked. "Besides, Kamiki has never been picky about where he lives. Did you know he slept on a park bench in Yokohama for a month?"

Kunikida was shocked. "Wouldn't his back ache?"

"Ah, well..." Dazai did not answer.

Kamiki Yūhaku had lost his sense of pain long ago, and there was no telling whether he could still get tired.

"We're here." Dazai stopped.

Kunikida paused and looked around, but saw no one. Just then, he noticed Dazai looking up. Kunikida followed his gaze and saw someone sitting on the trunk of a large tree.

Dressed in black, the man looked down at them, a smile in his red eyes and a crow perched on his shoulder.

Kamiki Yūhaku.

"Long time no see, Mr. Dazai."

"Can you come down?" Dazai looked up into Kamiki's eyes. "I hate looking up at people."

"I rather like it, looking down at people like this." Kamiki's voice was as airy and elusive as ever. He rested one hand on his chin, his red eyes fixed on them, yet it was as if he was not looking at them at all. "So, Mr. Dazai, did you need something?"

Dazai shook his head before asking, "Selling information?"

"Fifty thousand yen," Kamiki said. "No credit."

"Fifty thousand? That's not much." Dazai nodded. "I'll transfer the money in a bit. Do you know about the ability user killer who's been roaming Yokohama at night lately?"

Kamiki looked at him. "Send the money."

"Given our relationship..."

"No credit under any circumstances, Mr. Dazai." Kamiki smiled. "I hear your unpaid bills at the café got you blacklisted. Is that right?"

Dazai: ...

"Come to think of it, Mr. Dazai, you do seem to like buying on credit. Back in the Port Mafia, you often went to bars without paying and made Ango cover your drinks. Ango used to tell me that for all the good being an executive did you, you might as well not have been one. He wondered where your salary went."

"Washed away by the water when I attempted suicide, of course," Dazai answered shamelessly. "What, did you think a crow carried it off?"

Kunikida silently took two steps back.

How embarrassing.

"Here's fifty thousand yen." Kunikida took the money from his own pocket and held it out to Kamiki, but Kamiki was so high up that he could not reach him.

Following Kamiki's instructions, Kunikida put the bills on a nearby stone. It was not particularly clean and had damp marks on it. At that moment, Kunikida suddenly realized that Kamiki might not care about the money.

"Watch out for Fedya." That was all Kamiki said.

Dazai raised an eyebrow slightly. After a moment, he spoke. "So it really is him. Doesn't he ever get tired of doing this over and over?"

"Everyone has their own reasons for acting. You should understand that too, Mr. Dazai. We're all just striving for our own justice." Kamiki waved an arm, and the crow flew from his shoulder. Then he jumped down from the tree.

Dazai looked at Kamiki. "Where are you going?"

"Yokohama."

"This is the outskirts of Yokohama."

"Is that so?" Kamiki smiled. "Then I'll go into the city."

With that, Kamiki stepped past Dazai and Kunikida. The two turned to watch him walk away without a care, his back to them. A moment later, Kunikida looked at the fifty thousand yen he had left under the tree, several question marks popping up over his head.

He did not want the money at all, so why had he insisted they produce it before telling them anything, only to leave without taking it?

"Dazai, what did he mean by that?"

"How should I know?" Dazai said. "Kamiki's way of thinking is strange. He isn't a normal person. I can only predict what normal people will do."

Kunikida frowned. "Huh?"

"But I can make a guess." Dazai rubbed his chin. "He's going to Yokohama. Right now, there's an ability user killer attacking people in the dark there. Kamiki said this was the demon's doing, which means..."

Dazai raised an eyebrow slightly. "So that's it."

"What?"

"If that's the case..." Dazai rushed off, dialing a number as he went.

Kunikida, left behind: ...???

What should he do? He wanted to beat his partner up.

Dazai ran in the direction Kamiki had disappeared, but as a professional intelligence agent, Kamiki naturally would not let himself be found. Dazai looked around from the road, even checking the sky. There was not so much as a bird, let alone a crow.

Just then, his call connected.

"Hello? Dazai?" Ango Sakaguchi stood in a hallway. "I was in a meeting just now. Why are you calling at a time like this?"

"Keep an eye out," Dazai said. "Kamiki may have started making his move."

Ango's eyes widened slightly. "Now?"

"That's right," Dazai replied. "It's been over a week since Kamiki blew up that base. The government couldn't find him and has let its guard down. And right now, there happens to be an ability user killer murdering people in Yokohama. Kamiki told me the demon is pulling the strings."

"So?"

"Kamiki defected from the Rats in the House of the Dead, and they clashed in Tatsuhiko Shibusawa's fog. The demon has always wanted to get rid of him. Kamiki may be a little strange and not care much about getting hurt, but he definitely doesn't want to die, much less show up while the demon is still trying to kill him."

Ango frowned. "You're saying he's going after the demon himself?"

"Remember what we concluded?" Dazai said quietly. "Kamiki had his own reasons for joining the Rats in the House of the Dead. It bothered me at the time. The Rats are an international intelligence organization, but their headquarters are in Russia. Why would Kamiki rely on Russian influence to go to France? Thinking about it now, he had his own reasons for joining the Rats."

"The demon must have information that Kamiki cares about but doesn't know."

"He hasn't managed to get that information out of him all these years. It looks like he's planning to force the demon to talk."

Chapter 20

Kamiki Yūhaku had always believed there was a connection between Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Japanese government.

The connection was not out in the open, but lay in things hidden in the shadows.

For instance, why had no one been held accountable after the French Concession explosion years ago? It had been a military research facility for artificial abilities, and an accident had caused such a tragedy, yet no one cared. The ruins had even been left to become the slum of Suribachi City, as the government pleased.

The government's excessive confidence made Kamiki suspicious.

Later, Kamiki discovered it was because all the evidence had vanished.

Whether it concerned the so-called French Concession or the artificial ability experiments, no trace remained apart from Rimbaud's belongings and the few documents preserved by the Armed Detective Agency. The data and procedures from the experiments back then were also nowhere to be found. If the government had not still been making improvements based on the old data, Kamiki would even have thought those things had been completely destroyed in the explosion.

Clearly, they had not been.

The government had used some means to wipe out all the evidence, which was why the French Concession explosion had been treated so lightly.

It was through Fyodor's intelligence that he noticed something was wrong.

That year, Kamiki was nineteen. Not long after the Dragon Head Conflict ended, he had asked Fyodor about Shibusawa's whereabouts. The demon was in Russia at the time, yet he knew the situation in Japan inside out. Not only had he told Kamiki where Shibusawa was, he had also given him another piece of information.

Namely, the government was erasing the evidence of Shibusawa's rampages around the world.

Kamiki took note of that word: erasing.

So Kamiki began to test it. Under the pretext of buying smuggled goods, he went to the city where Shibusawa was staying and found evidence of Shibusawa's rampages abroad. He then returned home with it and the smuggled goods. Sure enough, three days later, the evidence in his possession vanished.

Before that happened, Kamiki had set up surveillance beside the evidence. But when he reviewed the footage, he found that the evidence did not appear even in the recording. The pictures he had taken of it earlier had disappeared as well.

It was as though Kamiki had never put anything there in the first place.

So Kamiki wondered: Why did Fyodor know about this?

What exactly is the organization within the government that can erase evidence?

Were the truth behind the French Concession explosion and the human experiments on military artificial abilities behind it erased in the same way?

Whatever the case, since this organization could erase evidence, that meant it controlled quite a lot. There had to be a copy of the so-called human experiment data in its possession. After all, even the government could be divided into several factions.

So Kamiki left Yokohama. He joined the Rats in the House of the Dead not only to wipe out the artificial ability organizations currently operating in France, but also to obtain information about this organization from Fyodor.

Unfortunately, Fyodor was too tight-lipped. Unless Kamiki had something that could sufficiently threaten him, Fyodor would not say anything useful.

To pry his mouth open, he could only disrupt his plans.

Meanwhile, Mori Ougai was walking down a street in Yokohama. He wore a white coat and carried a shopping bag, while a little girl walked beside him with her hands behind her back. No matter how one looked at him, he resembled a middle-aged

uncle

out shopping with his beloved daughter. After ending his call, Mori put his phone in his pocket.

"Are we at the pastry shop yet?" The little blonde girl in a red dress puffed out her cheeks. "Rintarō!"