The End is the Beginning is the End
1
Kuroda Shinpei. That was the name the composite human Scarecrow used publicly.
His duties were investigative. He was not investigating anyone in particular, however. He had merely been told to look for people who “contain possibilities that do not yet exist.” Possibilities no one, least of all the people in question, were aware of.
It was Scarecrow’s job to find them.
***
“A train is approaching. Please wait behind the yellow line… a train is approaching…”
In the morning, Shinpei boarded a crowded train and headed to the office like a typical human.
He usually wore a long dark gray coat and matching hat, but he removed the hat while on the train. He looked like an ordinary salaryman. His most distinctive feature was the unfastened belt on his coat.
“Ah…” the suit next to him groaned sleepily.
Up all night?
There were lines under the man’s eyes. Shinpei could tell the man suffered from a chronic lack of sleep. He also dosed himself with vitamin drinks before leaving the house every morning. Shinpei could discern a lot from people’s faces.
He’s got an ulcer. Bowels are a mess. His only saving grace is that his liver’s still working. But if he keeps living like this it won’t be long before that goes out, too.
He was an ordinary man. Shinpei shifted his attention elsewhere.
He looked at each of the passengers in the same way, careful not to let them notice his scrutiny. One was a thirty-something-year-old office lady who, despite her plain features, appeared to have several different sexual partners. Another was an elderly clerk who was probably embezzling funds or something equally illicit. He looked ready to keel over from the stress. There were all kinds of people.
Shinpei took a different route to work every day. It took more time than simply taking the shortest route, but he didn’t have to worry about being late.
Two more trains and a bus later, he arrived at the Kuroda Detective Agency. It was located in the corner of a building with extremely cheap rent.
“Oh, Kuroda-san. You’re in the office today?” the building superintendent asked, grinning. This man was ordinary. He did not know who Shinpei really was.
“Yeah, just hoping someone hires me soon,” Shinpei said, shrugging. “This recession’s killing me.”
“But there’s always work for detectives.”
“There are plenty of jobs—but not any that pay.”
They chatted for a moment longer, and at last Shinpei was in his office.
There were two doors, one of which had no lock. It served as the entrance to a waiting room for clients who dropped in while he was out. The second was the door to his private office.
Unlocking this second door, he found a person waiting for him inside.
“Yo, Scarecrow,” she said, waving her hand. She looked like a girl of about seventeen, dressed casually in jeans and a denim jacket.
However, this girl had entered a locked office without leaving any signs of entry, and until he was in the room, he had not been able to detect her presence.
She was like Shinpei.
“Hello, Pigeon,” he sighed, taking off his hat and coat.
“I’ve got work for you. They want you to check up on Teratsuki Kyoichiro.”
“Again? This is the fifth time.”
The girl called Pigeon shrugged. “Axis has their eye on him. He’s too successful.”
“Maybe he’s just that good. I can’t see why having a knack for economics should be interpreted as preparation for betrayal.”
As they talked, Shinpei filled the kettle at the sink and placed it on the gas burner. It was much hotter than was strictly legal. The pot was boiling in no time.
“You rig that yourself? That could get you evicted,” the girl said, eying the burner with a grin.
“I hate waiting for it to boil. It’s the aesthetics of it,” he said, quickly setting up some coffee to drip.
“I’ll take a Mandarin.”
“Do I look like I’m running a café, here? No requests,” he said, making her a cup of coffee as well, and taking the two cups over to the reception table.
She joined him there, took a sip of coffee, and hummed appreciatively.
“I always look forward to this when I come here. Scarecrow, you could do this for a living.”
“Everyone knows detectives are picky with their coffee. Part of my camouflage.”
“Ha ha ha, how thorough.”
“So? Details?”
Her expression became serious. “The Towa Organization has raised the observation status of Teratsuki Kyoichiro to Level A.”
“Eliminate at any sign of suspicious activity? That is serious,” Shinpei said, gravely.
“For the duration of this duty you can set aside your primary mission. Not like you’ve found any MPLS around here, anyway.”
“Doesn’t the Towa Organization prefer it that way?”
“Yeah. Nothing wrong with not having enemies.”
Even so, someone else would probably take over his regular duties while he was busy. Since that person was just another pawn, Shinpei would not be told who was covering for him.
“Makes you wonder why they’re working so hard to find enemies within,” he muttered.
“I don’t like it any more than you do, but his company is getting much too big.”
“I doubt he wanted it to expand so much, but the investors insist that profits must always be better than they were the year before.”
“You’re defending him? Go ahead—that’s fine with me. But you aren’t getting out of the job. No matter what.”
Once the Towa Organization made a decision, they never changed their minds.
“I know. I won’t let sympathy color my investigation or my reports.”
“Look out for yourself, ’kay?” She took another sip of coffee. “It smells so good…”
“The sort of smell that makes you want to keep on living?”
“Exactly. We aren’t human, and we couldn’t live without the Towa Organization.”
“…I know.”
“We both have to do what we have to do—and we have to work together on this. Right? As friends.”
“A Scarecrow and a Pigeon? Not the best couple,” Shinpei chuckled.
“It’s crows that can’t stand scarecrows, not pigeons,” the girl giggled.
The bell on the outer door rang.
“Come in! It’s not locked,” Shinpei said, standing up to greet his client.
A woman came in. She looked like a housewife in her late thirties, and she was very nervous. Probably here to find out if her husband’s cheating.
“Uh, um,” she stammered.
“Please, sit down,” Shinpei said, motioning her to the sofa. There was no need to worry about the room’s previous occupant: the girl had already vanished without a trace, along with the cup of coffee she’d been drinking.
They moved among ordinary people, always careful to reveal nothing of their true selves.
That was the world they lived in.
2
The Towa Organization was a group… no, they were too large to be called a group. They were a conglomerate that spanned the globe, monitoring and experimenting.
They conducted research on evolution. The Organization was driven to divine the source of human intelligence, to figure out what would come next, and ultimately to control the process that would get mankind there. More accurately, they were focused on keeping as much of humanity alive as possible in whatever that next step was. They saw it as a fight for survival. For them, it was an ongoing battle to ensure that mankind would win the inevitable evolutionary war.
Their primary tools in the struggle consisted of a great number of composite humans. These soldiers were created by the most advanced genetic research humanity had to offer. The basis of the research was a mystery—top secret even among the members of the Towa Organization. Kuroda Shinpei privately wondered if the source was something that had already out-evolved mankind. Of course, he never voiced this suspicion to anyone. If it were known that he was curious about it, he would have been disposed of immediately.
But—and this was also Shinpei’s private theory—if that source was not the future but simply an individual mutation, a freak, then what the Towa Organization was participating in was a farce of epic proportions.
And that might be perfectly appropriate for us…
Shinpei was walking through town, wearing his hat and dark gray coat, as always. He almost looked like a priest in the outfit. Children would occasionally point at him as he walked by, but for the most part his clothes did not stand out much in a crowd. The look was ideal for lurking undetected in dark places.
He started by taking care of his detective work. It wasn’t hard. He went directly to the cheating husband and said, “Your wife knows you’re cheating. Are you going to stop?”
The man promised to break it off immediately.
Satisfied, Shinpei took several photographs as proof of the man’s “innocence,” faking the times, and wrote a report claiming he had uncovered no suspicious activity.
Affairs could be smoothed over when they weren’t serious. He usually did the same thing if the woman was cheating. Unless, of course, his client had hired him to help win a divorce settlement.
When he’d wrapped up the case, he hung an “On Vacation” sign on the door of his office and went to work.
Teratsuki Kyoichiro. Even Shinpei did not know the man’s real name. However, he was one of the Towa Organization’s terminals, and like Shinpei, he was probably inhuman. Kyoichiro’s mission was to create an environment that would allow the Towa Organization to experiment with various methods of economic distribution.
He had been very successful, and his company, MCE, was one of the most powerful in the country. That, naturally, put the Organization on their guard. He was too successful.
Ironic…
Using ordinary investigative techniques, Shinpei made his rounds, checking up on MCE’s reputation.
“Eh? Investigation? Ha ha ha, that’s a waste of time.”
“Poke ’em all you like—you’ll get nothing out of ’em.”
“Can’t think of a single doubt I might have about them…”
“Well, it’s a one-man company. But as long as that one man is raking in the cash, who cares?”
“Yeah, any deal you make with them turns into gold. Everywhere else you get paid late, if at all…”
Everywhere he went, he heard nothing but positive comments.
There were no problems of any kind. The first instruction all Towa Organization terminals received was to avoid suspicious activity. Clearly Teratsuki Kyoichiro adhered to the command with diligence.
The closest thing to an issue he could find was that they were a little too high-profile. The Towa Organization frowned upon any sort of attention—good or bad—but having a good name was hardly something to be concerned about. Fame was fleeting. It would only take a little information manipulation for everyone to forget about MCE.
He investigated further but found nothing particularly notable. And yet, Shinpei was beginning to be bothered by just how perfect his results were.
The sheer ingenuity of it was beginning to smell like something he ran across in his work as a detective—alibi construction.
This guy’s too good to be true…
He could not shake the feeling that something was amiss.
He reviewed Kyoichiro’s cash flow again. His eyes caught on a property investment he’d overlooked the first time.
It was a donation to a prefectural general hospital. Not too uncommon, really. Private enterprises often voluntarily helped out hospitals and medical organizations.
But was this done just to incur good will? It wasn’t the most efficient way to provide aid to a public services organization. Compared with the flawless performance everywhere else, this seemed…nice.
He had no real reason to be suspicious, but even so, Shinpei decided to check it out.
And so he was walking through the streets, covered in dark gray, heading for the hospital.
On the way he bought a bouquet of flowers, disguising himself as a visitor. He amused himself by making a whimsical bouquet of peonies, golden lace, and garden bride. Roses were too hard-boiled for him—he preferred to avoid them.
The hospital was large. The building was an octagonal prism, thirteen stories tall. It was a strange shape but presumably chosen because of space limitations combined with a desire to fill the available volume as effectively as possible.
“Teratsuki-shi certainly has a penchant for strange buildings…” Shinpei muttered as he went in. Due to the large size of the complex, there were a number of security guards monitoring the grounds. However, the main hospital area was open to anyone.
He wandered around briefly, searching for nothing in particular.
The first floor lobby was filled with people waiting for their prescriptions to be filled. Cleaning staff were scrubbing the tile floor. Children cried for no understandable reason. Upstairs, patients were sleeping, but recovering women were laughing loudly with visitors, heedless of the suffering around them. Nurses rushed back and forth, always on their feet.
Nothing out of the ordinary.
Was I overthinking it? Maybe it was just a friendly gesture…
Still holding the flowers, he headed onward. Glancing at the floor guide near the entrance, he noticed an arrow pointing into the building next to the word “Garden.”
“……?”
Curious, he followed the arrow.
The center of the octagonal prism was hollowed out, and there was a garden in the middle. The beautiful patch of green came as a shock here in the heart of the city.
“Wow…” Shinpei said, impressed, as he stepped out into the garden.
He looked up and saw an array of mirrors designed to focus sunlight down into the center of the building.
“Fancy… did Teratsuki-shi do that?” he muttered, and began wandering aimlessly around, admiring the lush vegetation.
“Heh heh,” he heard someone chuckle.
He glanced toward the sound and saw a girl of about thirteen sitting on a nearby bench. She was looking at him and laughing. Judging by her pajamas, she was a patient here.
“You’re quite the passionate man,” she said. Something about the way she spoke sounded strangely masculine.
“It’s very impressive,” Shinpei said, with no trace of embarrassment. There was something about gardens that put people at ease.
“Let me guess. You came to visit someone, but they weren’t here, right?” she said, suddenly.
“Eh?”
“You went upstairs, and then came back down, but you still have your flowers. I saw you from here,” she explained.
He had been walking next to the windows, he realized. But he hadn’t looked down.
“That’s a very good observation. Yeah, that’s basically what happened,” he said.
“Liar,” she replied, teeming with confidence. “You’re just pretending to visit. You’re only here to snoop around.”
“Am I? What makes you think that?”
“Visitors only go to one floor. If you were trying to find a room, you would’ve looked more confused.” She spoke calmly. Having such a conversation with a stranger did not appear unusual for her.
A strange child. For some reason, he felt like she was a little witch.
Despite her blunt manner of speech, Shinpei was not at all put off. “I don’t know what else to say—you got me. I’m a detective. Here for work.”
“A detective? You have a card?”
Shinpei sat down next to her and handed one over. “Here.”
“Hmm, I see. Kuroda-san.”
“What’s your name, little Holmes?”
“I’m Nagi. Kirima Nagi.”
She used a masculine pronoun to refer to herself. It seemed to fit.
“Nagi-chan… strange name.”
“My father was eccentric. He gave me that name so I would remain calm and unflappable no matter what the situation.”
“I think I like that.”
“I don’t. Not when I get teachers at school who can’t read the kanji and call me Kaze.”
“Ha ha ha! That’s fantastic!” Shinpei laughed.
Nagi chuckled, too. She looked down at his card again. “Kuroda-san, what exactly are you investigating here?”
“Can’t tell you that. Trade secret.”
“Nothing to do with me?”
“Aren’t you self-important! I run a serious business, you know. I don’t have time to harass junior high school girls.”
“That sounds particularly impressive coming from someone who was just slacking off work to wander around muttering, ‘How pretty’ while staring at plants,” she retorted, grinning.
“You’ve got me there.” They both laughed, shoulders shaking.
They gazed at the flowers in silence for a while.
“It’s easy to relax here,” Nagi said, expansively.
“You sick or something? You don’t look all that…” Halfway through the question, Shinpei trailed off, realizing that she might not want to talk about it.
But Nagi did not appear to mind. “Yeah, well. I’m here for a kind of pain, really. Been here six months already.”
“Six months? Then school…?”
“Leave of absence,” she shrugged.
“Huh…”
“They don’t know what’s causing it. My body just suddenly starts to hurt a lot. The doctors keep telling me the problem’s in my mind, not my body.”
The way she spoke was so straightforward he couldn’t believe she was mentally unstable.
“Doesn’t seem likely…”
“Well, my family background is worse than the symptoms. I wouldn’t be surprised if they tried to blame the problem on that.”
“Huh…” was all Shinpei could say. He didn’t know how to react. But there was one thing that bothered him. “Your body hurts? Like…how much?”
“Indescribably,” Nagi said, grinning. She seemed at ease with it, but that just drove home how bad it must be. “I’ve told the doctors, but they just keep comparing it to growing pains. Painkillers don’t do much.”
“Growing pains…”
“Growing pains,” she explained, “are a kind of nerve pain born from the rapid changes in a child’s body and activities during growth spurts. There’s no treatment for them, but they vanish eventually when the child stops growing.”
This was exactly what Shinpei had imagined she meant, and it rattled him.
Could she be…?
He must have looked grim because Nagi slapped him on the back. “Don’t look so gloomy!”
“S-sorry,” he said, meaning it.
She broke up laughing. “You’re quite a character, Kuroda-san.”
“Am I?”
“Most grown-ups would never dream of apologizing to a kid like that.”
“Detectives take everyone seriously. Anyone can be a criminal,” he joked.
“Even kids?”
“That’s a very basic trick.”
Nagi cackled, “Oh yeah? Guess that makes me your number one suspect.”
“Nah. The beautiful and mysterious girl is such a cliché no mystery writer would go near you.”
“Beautiful? So you’re flirting with me now?”
“Well…”
At this point their conversation was interrupted by a voice behind them. “Kirima-san, time to go back to your room.” It was the voice of a young woman.
“That’s Dr. Kisugi. Gotta go,” Nagi said, standing up. “See you later, detective.”
“Yeah. Hey, take the flowers?” he suggested, holding out the peculiar bouquet of peonies, golden lace, and garden bride.
“No, thanks. I never take anything I don’t need…” She grinned and continued, “is what I’d usually say, but why not?” Nagi took the flowers from him.
“Thanks,” Shinpei said, smiling back.
“Say, detective… if you’ve got time, you should check me out. You might find something interesting,” Nagi suggested.
“Will do,” he said, and a young doctor, presumably Dr. Kisugi, came into sight.
“What are you doing? You aren’t well!”
“I know!” Nagi said, winking at Shinpei. She left the garden with the doctor.
Shinpei waved, watching her go.
3
He ultimately reported that his investigation of Teratsuki Kyoichiro had uncovered nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing his clients would care about, at least. If he had been an ordinary detective, the fact that Teratsuki Kyoichiro had a number of mistresses, each of whom had children, would have been noteworthy, but that wasn’t news his clients would care about. Synthetic humans could not produce children, so they were definitely not his. With that in mind, his lovers were nothing but a front to maintain the illusion of his humanity.
And so he headed back to the hospital.
This time he did not wander but went directly to a room—a private room. He could hear girls’ cheerful voices through the door.
He knocked.
“Coming!” a girl said brightly, and the door opened.
“Hello,” he said, bowing his head.
The girl who had opened the door was wearing what looked like a junior high school uniform. She frowned at him. “Who are you?”
“The detective Kirima-san summoned,” he said, politely.
Nagi called out from the bed, “It’s okay, Naoko. I know him.”
“Oh? Okay, then.” Naoko appeared to be a friend of Nagi’s. She dropped her guard, and waved him in, smiling.
“Detective…you have results?” Nagi asked, grinning.
“You could say that. Never thought you’d be a billionaire,” Shinpei said, shaking his head.
“What? Detective, you were investigating Nagi?” Naoko asked, fascinated.
Innocently, Shinpei said, “She told me to.”
***
Kirima Nagi.
Nagi was the only daughter of the writer Kirima Seiichi, who had died unexpectedly four years earlier. She inherited the rights to all of his works, which, even after his death, were still selling millions of copies a year. Naturally, those rights came with their share of trouble.
“At first I thought you might be pretending to be sick, and hiding here, but it looks like you really are sick. Unfortunately.”
“Why unfortunately?”
“There’s no benefit to being sick, is there?”
“Exactly,” Naoko said, earnestly. “No matter how rich she is, she’s still sick. Get better soon! I don’t want to wind up too far ahead of you.”
Her words were said in jest, but there was genuine concern behind them. She was a good girl.
The three of them chatted for a while about nothing in particular. Eventually, it was time for Naoko to go.
“I’d better be off, Nagi.”
“Me too,” Shinpei said, rising from his seat on the bed.
But Nagi stopped him, “Stay a little longer, Detective.”
“Oh?” he started to sit down again, but Naoko turned around, halfway out the door, and beckoned to him.
“Detective, if I could have a moment?”
He glanced at Nagi and then followed her out. As soon as they were out of sight, Naoko went for him.
“Detective, are you on Nagi’s side?”
He thought before answering. “…at the moment I am neither friend nor foe.”
“Be a friend. Please. That girl’s playing it strong, but I think she still misses her father.” Her eyes were serious.
“…I’ll see what I can do.”
“Really? Promise?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.”
Naoko was not so easily convinced. She made him swear to cut his pinky off if he was lying.
When he came back in, Nagi was laughing. “So much for being hard-boiled.”
Shinpei winced. “…you heard?” Then he smiled. “She’s a good friend.”
“I know. I’m lucky to have her,” Nagi nodded. “Now, to business…have you made up a bill yet?”
Shinpei grimaced. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. You got my agent fired for embezzling, didn’t you?”
“I did nothing. I just asked a couple of questions, and he suddenly promised to quit.”
“So how come a large sum of money—matching exactly what was missing—was transferred into my account?”
“No idea. Maybe one of Kirima Seiichi’s books had an unexpected reprint,” Shinpei said, sticking to his guns.
Nagi glared at him for a long moment, but then she sighed. “You’re a great detective, Kuroda-san.”
“You think? I don’t mind the compliment, but I’m afraid it takes more than that to convince me,” he protested.
Nagi ignored him and asked pointedly, “Why did you do it, Kuroda-san?”
Shinpei looked serious but said nothing.
“I hate thinking about stuff this way, but were you trying to win me over?”
“What if I was? Tell me to scram, and you’ll never see me again.” He shrugged.
“…………” Nagi fell silent for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind. “Kuroda-san…I don’t understand.”
“What?”
“What I should do. Even if I get better, what kind of person should I be?” Her tone was somewhat disconnected.
Shinpei matched it. “What do you want to be?”
“Maybe a writer? Like my dad? Meet a great guy and get married? Use all that money and start a business? I don’t know. None of those sound right.”
She was completely calm, speaking as though she were discussing the dissection of a frog. This girl was much too smart—she saw the deceit that lay behind the promise of each potential destiny.
But she had not yet been convinced that she had no future. She may have considered the possibility, but she had no intention of becoming the heroine of a cheap tragedy.
Even if she knew the truth, she would probably stay that way.
“I don’t believe anyone manages to live a life that ‘sounds right,’” Shinpei muttered.
“Not even detectives? You don’t think your job is worth it?”
“Nah. Detective work’s a dirty business.”
He saw himself as an informant, forced to spy on people who should have been on his side.
“Really? I was thinking I might want to be a kind of detective…” she said, flopping back on her pillows. “Maybe I should reconsider. Kuroda-san, you ever want to be anything besides a detective?”
“Hmm…maybe something like…a superhero?”
Nagi snorted, “Please.”
“No, really. I mean it. Detectives get tied down by all kinds of boring stuff, but superheroes get to solve crimes without dealing with any of that other crap. I wouldn’t mind doing that.”
He was half-joking, but Nagi became oddly serious. “Hmm…” she said, nodding. Then she looked up again, eyes glittering. “You should go for it. You’d make a good one.”
“But how?”
“I’ll sponsor you. You decide the rest!”
“Whoa.” Shinpei grimaced.
“Think about it!” Nagi said, eyes gleaming, leaning toward him.
“You shouldn’t say things like that so easily. People will take advantage of you.”
“Screw it; I’ve never been too fond of my money, anyway. If it was you doing it, I wouldn’t mind being cheated out of every last yen,” she said, looking him right in the eye. He was reminded again just how young she really was.
“Nah, I wouldn’t…” he started to say, and then noticed something was terribly wrong. Nagi’s face had suddenly crumpled, and she collapsed onto the sheets.
“…unh!” she groaned.
Shinpei’s eyes widened. This must be the pain she had mentioned.
“Oh no! I’ll call a doctor…!”
He reached for the call button next to the bed, but Nagi suddenly grabbed his hand.
He looked toward her with a start, and she glared directly into his eyes, grimacing in pain. Her voice strangled, she rasped, “Really…think about it. Please.”
Shinpei could say nothing. He just pressed the call button.
The doctor came running. It was not Dr. Kisugi but a male doctor. Several nurses came in, as well, and Shinpei was driven out of the room.
Even in the hall, he could hear her groaning in pain.
When he saw the desperation in Nagi’s eyes, Shinpei had realized something. She knew instinctively that she would never be cured.
He opened his hand, the hand Nagi had grabbed a moment before. Smoke rose from his palm. It was burning.
Because Nagi had grabbed him.
There was no doubt about it now.
She was experiencing growing pains, but it was not any normal kind of growth. She was evolving. She was definitely one of the MPLS the Towa Organization was working so hard to find.
What’s more, he knew her evolution was destroying her body. She was destined for failure, unable to survive the change. She was an evolutionary dead end. No matter what any of her doctors did, she had no future.
“…………”
He stared down at his burned hand.
I’ve done it at last.
He had finally fulfilled his mission. He had found an MPLS. It was a huge success for his primary directive. Even if she was a faulty sample, every MPLS was valuable, worth securing for their research potential.
She would be taken to a facility, subjected to countless tests, and after they had finished experimenting on her while she was alive, her lifeless corpse would be dissected.
I’ve done it. All this time spent disguised as a detective has finally paid off. All those shoes worn thin investigating love affairs was not for nothing.
He should’ve felt the bliss of success earned after so many years of empty results. But why did he not feel happy?
“…ha.” Suddenly, face twitching, he started to laugh. “Ha ha ha ha, ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha…”
It was a hollow laugh that shook the air in the hospital, causing the temperature to drop. A cold echo spread out around him.
4
Mo Murder received emergency orders.
Publicly he was an ordinary salaryman named Sasaki Masanori, but in truth, he did not work for any company. There were records that could prove his employment at a major food manufacturer, but those were fakes provided by the Towa Organization. His real career was in a different field.
He was an assassin.
Mo Murder was a simple combat-type synthetic human, and it was his job to dispose of anyone who might harm the Towa Organization.
This time the call came to his cell phone while he was walking the streets as usual, pretending to be a normal businessman while actually searching for signs of an MPLS.
“Sasaki here.”
“…D3 in progress. Accept order at NH33W,” a voice said in lightning-fast Hungarian and then hung up.
He quickly headed to the specified location, an ordinary coffee shop named Changlese.
A contact was disguised as a waitress there, and she gave him further information that he immediately proceeded to act upon.
“…name of Scarecrow, human name Kuroda Shinpei. Kill on sight for traitorous actions. Namely, an attack on facility RS22TTU…”
Why the hell did he do that?
“Destroyed the facility, reasons unknown… damage concentrated on drugs and equipment.”
Was he trying to get some sort of medicine or related equipment? What’s he going to do with them?
He checked his target’s combat abilities and made a few educated guesses at his mental state, analyzing the data as best he could. But his conclusions were inadequate, based on insufficient data, so he was forced to decide his best plan was to exercise extreme caution and attack at full strength.
From the data, he chose an escape route that seemed likely. His plan was based more on his finely honed instincts as an assassin than the unreliable data.
Mo Murder pursued Scarecrow like a hound dog.
***
“Mm?”
On her way back from the restroom, Kisugi Makiko noticed the hospital window was half open. She frowned.
She was on duty in the psychiatric ward that night. She was a new doctor, having just completed her residency, and was often given the unpopular jobs.
“That’s strange…” she muttered, closing the window. Burglary seemed unlikely. This was the seventh floor. No thief would climb this far up.
Had someone simply forgotten to close it? That certainly seemed to be the most probable scenario. She turned and began to head back to her office.
Then she heard something clink.
She stiffened and called out toward the sound, “Is someone there?”
From a different direction, she heard loud pounding and someone swearing. Kisugi Makiko ran toward the noise.
The door to the room of one of the patients she was counseling, Kirima Nagi, was half-open and still moving. Yet, there was no sign of anyone inside.
“Wh-what…?” She stepped hesitantly into the room.
The window here was also open. She looked outside but saw nothing but darkness.
The patient was sound asleep. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Perhaps she was hot—both of her arms were outside her blanket.
“Mm?”
There was a small bottle under the bed.
It was a medical ampule, with the seal broken. About half-full, the contents had been carefully measured into a syringe. But used ampules were usually disposed of immediately.
It was very strange for one to be lying around like this.
And she had never seen this particular ampule being used in this hospital. Not just this hospital—she had never seen anything shaped quite like it in medical school or in her years as a resident, either…
“…………”
She found herself reflecting on the contempt she received from the head doctors on account of her gender, on the sneers of the older nurses because she was new, because she hadn’t graduated from a particularly prestigious school.
Before she knew it, she was lowering the ampule into her pocket, careful not to spill any of its contents.
A moment later, a security guard came running in. He must have heard her voice.
“Dr. Kisugi, something wrong?”
Careful not to let him see how fast her heart was beating, she said quietly, “No, it was nothing.”
The half-filled ampule was carried away unseen in Kisugi Makiko’s pocket, moving to a place unrelated to the present situation.
***
Damn it! Like an amateur!
Mo Murder ground his teeth.
Scarecrow was fleeing through the nighttime streets. If Mo Murder had not let himself be so overcome with surprise that he made a sound and attracted the attention of that woman doctor, he would have been finished long ago.
But the hospital room Scarecrow had probably chosen at random to hide inside… Mo Murder had recognized the name of the patient, and it had rattled him.
Kirima Nagi—that man’s daughter. The daughter of Kirima Seiichi, the man he had killed four years ago.
Of all the places for him to hide…
Scarecrow had only gone to the hospital to acquire nourishment. Mo Murder had seen him stealing glucose. He was also injured, so he must have been looking for painkillers, as well.
He had probably ducked into that room to inject himself without anyone noticing. But for that room’s occupant to be one of the few people who could ever have slowed Mo Murder down…it was a staggering coincidence.
But it was a coincidence. This has nothing to do with that man. My fate is not still tied to his!
Mo Murder shook his head, desperately trying to stop himself from thinking about Kirima Nagi. Scarecrow was fast, but he was wounded, and could not run forever.
Mo Murder cleared his head, and put aside his blunder, like an athlete trying to achieve a come-from-behind victory.
Quietly and unerringly, he pursued his target.
5
As Shinpei ran, he asked himself, “Why?” over and over.
The assassin’s attacks were astonishingly precise and swift. They were over in an instant, the assassin gone before he even had a chance to fight back. His assailant wasn’t trying to finish him off directly; instead, he was just picking away, gradually weakening him.
It was working. Shinpei was beginning to believe he would not make it out of this alive.
But questions still spun inside his head.
Why did I do that?
She was just a kid. He’d spent a couple of hours with her at most. Why would he go and throw his life away for her?
He had stolen a powerful drug called the “Evolution Medicine” from a Towa Organization facility. Then he had injected Nagi with it (his hands had been shaking, so first he had taken some painkillers as a sedative).
The medicine would accelerate the evolution of any human, but in Nagi’s case, since she had already started to evolve, it would act as a vaccine against the possibility lurking within her body. At least, in theory. If all went well, her body would become that of an ordinary human again, and she would avoid being killed by an incomplete transformation.
He had carefully chosen the amount to inject, but even so, it was very risky. It might have no effect, and its potential side effects could easily kill her instead of saving her. If that happened, all of this would be in vain.
He knew that. So why had he risked everything on a gamble that might save her?
Honestly, what was I thinking?
The assassin’s attacks were persistent. Eventually Shinpei was so badly injured he could barely stay on his feet. He had lost a lot of blood and his eyes would not focus.
The assassin jumped out of an alley and struck him hard on the head.
But Shinpei still wore his hat, under which he had hidden a metal plate. The assassin’s knife was deflected, twisting his assailant’s hand awkwardly.
“Ack!”
“Ha! Gotcha…!” Shinpei cried, attempting to flee, but there was nowhere to run.
He staggered around the back of a building, across the grass, and collapsed to the ground.
“……Ah………”
All his strength left him.
He looked up at the sky. It was morning now, and the sky was clear and blue. He hadn’t noticed the transition from night to day.
There were a lot of people behind him. He wondered where he was and then heard a voice over a loudspeaker:
“Mourners attending the Miyashita funeral, please come to the main hall.”
He could just make out a tall pipe rising to the sky, emitting smoke.
A crematorium…huh…the perfect place…
He wasn’t getting up again. No force of will could make him move—his body was dying. It was surprising enough that he’d managed to run this far.
“Really? Promise?”
“You should go for it.”
Girls’ voices were in his head.
But at the same time, there was something unpleasant rising up inside him, an agonizing pain.
Oh God. Even with all this, I’m still not…
But his thoughts were interrupted as he noticed the black shadow standing in front of him.
His eyes were too weak to see anything clearly, but he could tell it was not the assassin. It was too small. A child, perhaps?
In his blurred vision it looked less like a person and more like a pipe rising out of the ground.
“What are you doing?” it asked.
The voice was clear, but he could not tell if the shadow was a boy or a girl.
“Not a lot,” he tried to say, but his lips would not move properly, and he barely made a sound. It felt like he was only speaking in his mind.
But the shadow seemed to have no problem understanding him. “But…you’re dying,” it said.
“Apparently.”
“You aren’t scared?”
“…sure I am.”
“Then… then why are you so calm?”
It seemed like the tone of the voice changed suddenly in mid-sentence. It became somewhat mechanical—automatic.
“I am scared, but…I’m also really angry, so I guess that stops me from thinking about dying.”
“You’re angry?”
“At how lame I am.”
“…you refer to your clothes? A strange hat, a dark coat… why do you dress like that?”
“….nothing to do with my clothes. I’m a scarecrow, you see. I like black things, like crows.”
“Hmm.”
“And what are you? A shinigami? Wait a minute longer, I’m almost ready for you.”
“Shinigami?”
“I’m a lot like you, you know. A scarecrow and a crow together are a very bad omen…” He tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Why are you angry?” the shadow asked, its tone oddly mocking.
“…guess I can tell a shinigami. You see, I tried to save a girl. In exchange for my life.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Yeah, but now…at the last minute…I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t bothered. I’m thinking I did something stupid, something I shouldn’t have done.”
He gritted his teeth. He could barely talk, but somehow, he continued the conversation—partially thinking the words, partially muttering them. “It would’ve been better to have done nothing rather than end up all pathetic and washed out…and it’s like a bad joke… I’m the one, I’m the one who blathered on about superheroes, so cocky. But I’m nothing like that… there’s no excuse for it. She said I could be one, but…”
This was awful, incredibly awful.
“…………”
The shadow listened quietly.
He groaned, “I should be punished for this. Someone should pass judgment on me…but there’s no time. I’m dying. It’ll all be over soon. With me still stuck here, undecided…”
The shadow interrupted him. “You want me to judge you?”
“…Eh?”
“If I do that, will you become the superhero you want to be?”
“…………”
“Would you wish for the regret in your mind to be cast aside? Would you want your mental state to once again become one she can be proud of? To return to the moment when your mind was a beautiful thing?”
The shadow’s voice was emotionless. It was mysterious, unfathomable.
“…………”
For a long moment, he did not respond, but at last the conversation in his mind resumed.
“What are you?”
“You called me a shinigami.”
“…You’re probably just a delusion, an illusion you see and hear as you die. A fragile hope, like a bubble, that will pop and vanish in a moment… you’re kind of a creepy one, too.”
“You think I’m nothing more than some kind of…sinister bubble?”
“Yeah…funny, really. The last thing I see is a strange kind of bizarre…”
He tried smiling again, but failed, ending with a very asymmetrical expression.
“You…”
“Mm?”
“You haven’t answered yet. Will you choose to be as you were?” the shadow asked.
“Heh.”
Shinpei did not know how he planned to answer. He waited expectantly, wondering what response his heart would produce.
6
“He was here.”
Mo Murder approached the thing lying in a heap, half-hidden in the grass behind the crematorium.
Scarecrow was not moving, showing no reaction to his approach. He was well and truly dead.
Mo Murder had expected as much. He had known the loss of blood would have killed him by now.
He had calmly waited until he would be able to deal with the corpse away from watching eyes. He pulled some chemicals that would help dispose of the body out of his bag.
“Still,” he muttered, looking down at Scarecrow’s face in death.
He looked so proud, like there was not a trace of regret over what he had done. His face was pale and bloodless, but there was something that still shone within it.
“How did he manage to die looking like that?”
Like he’d led a life worth living.
Mo Murder grumbled the whole time he was disposing of Scarecrow’s corpse.
“The End Is the Beginning Is the End” closed.