“…”
Mitamura glanced at Ranpo’s silent expression before continuing.
“But you know how it is with honor and dignity and all that. I can’t let you go that easily, so I’m having a little dilemma here. As things are now, the boss is going to make us hurt you even though we don’t want to, and you wouldn’t want that, right? I know I wouldn’t. So here’s my offer…”
Mitamura took a step forward in the dim room. His shadow grew lengthwise in the light coming through the window from the night outside. He sat before Ranpo, who was closing his eyes, then whispered:
“…How about joining us?”
An uncomfortable silence reigned over the room.
“We are men with ambition. Our only wish is to cleanse this country of evil, and we would love to have a talented skill user such as yourself. What do you say?”
The backlight obscured Mitamura’s face in the darkness, but one could easily imagine his cold, thin smile from the abyss.
“…Hmm?” Ranpo, sitting down, lifted his head up and looked in the direction of the gaze. “Oh, sorry. You just kept going on and on, so I got bored and stopped listening… Could you make it more interesting next time?”
Mitamura’s face froze. A tense air filled the room.
Fukuzawa was rushing toward an underground prison. It was a square, one-story building adjacent to the police station. He had already contacted them in advance, so he greeted the guards and headed straight down the long staircase. Unlike a detention cell that temporarily held suspects, the facility was built with the principal aim to keep any criminals from ever leaving. Fukuzawa reached a thick steel double door. There were no windows in the cell, and the walls were reinforced with steel frames. In the back was a boy.
“You awake?”
The boy wore a straitjacket and was constrained with multiple chains in the empty concrete room. He slowly looked up. His empty, emotionless eyes were a reddish brown. Fukuzawa looked through the narrow observation window on the door and saw the assassin’s face. It was the hit man from this morning who’d killed the secretary. He quietly stared at Fukuzawa from under his short crimson hair, not so much as a hint of emotion in his eyes.
“How’s the cell?”
“Not as bad as some others. The air-conditioning works.”
Even Fukuzawa, who had faced numerous villains and assassins, had never seen eyes like his. Most skilled hit men looked down on others as if they were insects. Their eyes were cold and lacked compassion. But this boy’s were different. They weren’t cold or any temperature. They were just empty. Not only was there no compassion or kindness, there was no hate or passion to kill. His eyes were those of a person who had given up all hope and despair—the eyes of a person who had removed himself from emotional things.
This kid’s different from the old me. Perhaps he never felt any joy from killing others. He was probably only killing because he had nothing else to do.
“I came because there’s something I want to ask you,” Fukuzawa said, facing the observation window. “Have a look at this.”
Fukuzawa held out the case toward the observation window, showing the cylinder with the memory device.
“This is a memory device used by a certain national organization. It needs special equipment to be deciphere
d, and stealing the information inside is next to impossible. It’s used by people under the witness protection program so they can remain invisible to the public while exchanging information with the witness protection organization. In other words, key figures targeted by criminal organizations would possess this device. Furthermore, there’s something all these key figures have in common. They’re all skill users.”
Fukuzawa closely observed the hit man, but the hit man’s gaze didn’t change.
“Now let’s talk about why I’m here. You are a highly skilled assassin who’s worked for outside organizations as well, I’m sure. So have you received any requests to capture a skill user as of late?”
The boy didn’t answer.
“Which is it?”
“…I can’t reveal my clients,” answered the boy in a hoarse voice.
“Doesn’t have to be about your clients’ requests.” Fukuzawa tried to bargain. “Have you heard recently about anybody around here searching for someone who could capture a skill user alive? It’s a difficult target, someone who pops up randomly and is currently under the witness protection program. The client would have asked for this man to be found and captured alive in secret. The payment would have been exceptional, and the client would have kept their identity confidential. The client would have probably called themselves ‘Angel’ or ‘V.’”
The moment the boy heard the name “V,” his shoulders twitched. This assassin knows something, Fukuzawa thought.
The government, which didn’t officially acknowledge the existence of skill users, was secretly protecting those skill users, and the gentleman in the suit was most likely one of them. They were preeminent figures even in this city, beings sought after by foreign military parties, domestic criminal organizations, and countless enemies. It wasn’t clear why these people were after them, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they held secrets connected to the foundation of the country.
A run-of-the-mill group of thugs wouldn’t even be able to find a footprint left by someone of that caliber. Even if they did find them, they wouldn’t be able to break through the witness protection organization’s police line unless they were a top-class assassin. Plus, the organization behind this—the so-called V—refused to dirty their own hands. They would solely use people from the outside.