Volume 5, Jinnai Shinobu's Apocalypse — Side B — OP_code"Rail_song_jail". Part 9-13

This chapter is updated by wuxiaworld.eu

Part 9 (Uchimaku Hayabusa — Day 10/03 21:05 - 21:20)

In Harbor Alley, the Mystery Freak (dressed as a bunny) returned to land from the restaurant cruiser that was crammed in with all the others.

There were trivial rumors of boats, helicopters, or long distance swimmers trying to meet up in the “demonic sea”, yet never finding the other person, and three Tokyo residents who had investigated the rumors out of pure curiosity had ended up dead.

Most of the small ships that had left for the “demonic sea” were stored in, serviced at, and left from Harbor Alley.

“What? I guess not all of them are restaurants or food stands.”

As we wandered around, we found something else mixed in among the filthy cruisers. Instead of the aroma of cooking meet or boiling stews, I found one boat that smelled more like solder. In fact, there were a lot like that.

Thinking they all served food had brought a heavy sensation to my stomach, but it looked like that wasn’t the case.

These shops had nothing to do with food.

“This boat is filled with bare speakers, this one is packed full of capacitors and transistors, and this one has…what? Those aren’t lightbulbs. Are they vacuum tubes?”

“Looks like a small electronics marketplace. They’re probably stripping them from somewhere.”

A lot of boxes had “defective” written across them in permanent marker.

It made me want to ask the owner if any of the products weren’t defective.

“Why does this shop have dozens of similarly-shaped massagers shoved inside umbrella stands?”

“Eh!? W-well, you know, detective. The women might be too embarrassed to bring those ‘specialized goods’ to the register, so this gives them an excuse that hides their true reasons.”

“?”

“Oh, c’mon! It’s a device that vibrates when you switch it on! Try to imagine why someone would buy that!! Japan doesn’t that have that many people with stiff shoulders!!”

For some reason Enbi’s face was beet red.

Hmm. This middle school girl has no problem walking around at night in a bunny suit, so why did this produce such an extreme reaction?

Confused, I looked back at the Mystery Freak, but she did her best to not look me in the eye and used her small hand to frantically fan her heated cheeks.

When she spoke, her voice was more high pitched than usual as if trying to hide something.

“O-ohh, I see. They secretly gather up any defective products before they’re disposed of at the factory. Mass production ensures that there will always be a certain number of these.”

“Hm? How do you know?”

“I-isn’t it obvious!? A completed product has a number printed on it to indicate which factory it was made in. That means it’s a proper piece of electronics. But that part comes last because they don’t want to print the number on defective products they’re only going to reject.”

“And they still work?”

“This is why they’re labelled ‘defective’.”

We looked around a few of the cruisers but didn’t find any useful information.

What were we even supposed to ask about? I couldn’t exactly pull out my police badge to question them about the truth of some rumors and there wasn’t a clear target like Hanako-san or a Kuchisake-Onna. It was nothing more than boats and helicopters not being able to find each other in the nearby ocean. Other than those who actually went out into the sea, the people on the island wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary.

“Detective, don’t tell you’ve decided this is hopeless and are considering leaving.”

“If you can read my mind that well, I’d prefer you made the much kinder choice of not getting me involved in the first place.”

“You can’t do that!! If you don’t take the investigation part seriously, you’ll pay for it later! You’ll be hit by a metal bat from behind or stabbed in the gut by a fruit knife and realize you’d seen something after all as your consciousness fades away!!”

“This isn’t a mansion mystery where the mountain road is blocked by a landslide, so nothing that harsh is going to happen!!”

“Detective, have you forgotten we’re on a desert island isolated out in the middle of the ocean!?”

“It isn’t a desert island and it isn’t isolated. This is a tourist destination with proper infrastructure!!”

“Not to mention that a genius beautiful mystery-solver and a foolish policeman have come to that island with a meaningful lead-in!! Something’s bound to happen, right!?”

“I’m not even going to bother getting after you for the ‘foolish’ part. I’ll just get right to the point: get away from me! Now that you mention it, you look a lot like the Grim Reaper!!”

The police may be the home of scientific investigation, but even we could be superstitious.

For some reason, the Mystery Freak started trying to hug me, so I grabbed her face and tried to pull her way.

Suddenly, something heavy grazed my nose and made a large dent in the side of the cruiser next to us.

“!?”

Something had flown our way.

I reflexively turned toward the loud noise and saw something fall into the ocean between the boat and the wharf. I only caught a glimpse, but it was about the size of a softball. However, it wasn’t actually one. Even when thrown at 160 kph by a pitching machine, a softball wouldn’t have the destructive power to dent a ship’s hull that was built to withstand collisions with other ships or running aground.

The dent in the cruiser’s hull was the size of a fist, so that was how large the blunt weapon had been.

I guessed it had been a stone.

I couldn’t take this lightly. I seriously doubted it had simply been thrown by hand, so some kind of device had to have been used to throw it. And with that weight and speed, even a fully equipped riot squad would have their helmet and skull split open by a hit to the head or have their ribs utterly crushed through their bulletproof vest by a hit to the chest. In a way, this weapon was more dangerous than a handgun.

“How did they pull that off!?”

“Where are you looking, detective? Don’t look where it hit. You need to look where it was fired from!!”

The Mystery Freak grabbed my shoulders and turned me around.

Harbor Alley had several cruisers placed atop some flat concrete ground in addition to those moored along the wharf. Rather than just having the engine die, those worn-out boats probably couldn’t even float in the water anymore, so they were being used in place of tents.

I spotted a small figure darting behind one of the cruisers packed in like it was a full parking lot.

Was that a child?

And what was that in their hand?

It had looked like a bow gun. It was seventy to eighty centimeters long. It looked quite large, but part of that would be due to comparing it to the small figure holding it. However, the bow portion was strange. It was not curved like a crescent moon. Like the letter M, a fork-like metal part extended from each side to join with the string.

“We can think about it later! They’ll get away, detective!!”

“Idiot! Don’t run after someone when you don’t know what they’re armed with!!”

I remembered words would never stop her, so I grabbed the Mystery Freak’s arm as she tried to run up ahead and I lightly threw her. I supported her body just before her back hit the concrete ground and I gently lowered her.

“I’ll give chase! You lie here!!”

I began running before she could complain.

Why had this person targeted us so suddenly? Why at that moment? Had they been targeting me or the Mystery Freak? Who even were they? Several questions spiraled through my mind, but I would never answer them if I lost sight of this person.

Despite all the cruisers packed together, there were still narrow pathways like the lines on a Go board. There were a lot of things to hide behind, so it would be easy to lose track of them even at close range, but I was most worried about a surprise attack. To make matters worse, I didn’t have my gun. Unlike in police dramas, detectives didn’t wear a revolver on their hip every day.

I passed by a few cruisers and caught sight of the small back.

Their white shirt stood out in the darkness.

Just when I thought I was going to catch up, the figure turned back toward me.

They accurately aimed the strangely-shaped stone-throwing bow gun and I saw a small flash of red light in the darkness.

A laser pointer!?

“Dammit!!”

As soon as I ducked behind a cruiser, I heard a spectacular dull sound like a frying pan being crushed by an elephant’s foot. The hull of this cruiser had been dented, too. If that had hit me, it would have smashed the bones wherever it had hit.

The plastic hull really scared me. It was probably no weaker than metal, but I had a lot more trouble trusting it.

I guessed they were using stones instead of arrows because of the Minor Offenses Act. Even if they don’t violate the Swords and Firearms Control Law, electric drills and spare razor blades technically violated the law if you carried them around “for anything other than their intended purpose”, but no one was going to stop someone from picking rocks up off the ground.

And unfortunately, bows did not violate the Swords and Firearms Control Law. No registration was needed to purchase one and no one would get after a kid for making their own arrows by whittling down bamboo with a knife.

But all of that brought a question to mind.

Then what crime am I supposed to accuse them of when I catch up?

I changed my line of thinking when I heard a spine-chilling sound greater than a full swing of a metal bat.

Attempted murder will do nicely!!

Two fist-sized stones had flown my way in quick succession. That meant their plan was not to shoot and run. They may have decided to take me out to make sure they could escape safely and they may have changed their mind after I didn’t fire any warning shots with a gun. Perhaps I should have shouted “stop or I’ll shoot” even though I didn’t have my gun.

“This isn’t good…”

A third sound of impact shook my surroundings.

When I instinctually stepped back, I realized the chased and the chaser had swapped positions and a boiling heat filled the bottom of my stomach.

And at that point, I finally noticed something.

My surroundings were very quiet. Too quiet. Even if the cruiser in front of me was a piece of junk, I still would have thought its owners would come running when it was being damaged. Either when eating at the Chinese restaurant or when going around the electronics shops, someone must have informed them that the police were here. Everyone had long since evacuated and then lured me into these hunting grounds.

“But why?”

What was this person so afraid of? Why were they willing to kill me just because I was with the police? Was the Mystery Freak right and Harbor Alley had some great secret? Were the rumors true? Was something more lurking here? Question after question raced through my mind, but one especially large sentence pushed all the others out of the way: then what do I do?

The straining sound of a tightening string hurt my ears.

Most likely, this person was pulling back the string of their special bow gun.

What do I do!? Run? Hide? How far will either of those get me against someone who can fling stones with enough force to smash human bones!?

The straining sound of the string continued.

However, it did not stop. I didn’t hear the string catching on the notch from the trigger. Confused, I hesitantly poked my head out to check and I found an odd sight indeed.

First of all, the attacker was a girl with short hair who was about the Mystery Freak’s age or possibly even younger. She wore what was not quite a school uniform. The outfit was made up of a sailor shirt and shorts. It looked more like an actual sailor suit than a school’s sailor uniform.

“Nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!”

The girl had the front of the stone-throwing bow gun pressed against the ground, her feet held a metal ring-like part down, and she was using both hands to pull on the string. Or at least I thought that’s what she was trying to do. Really, she was just crouched down and trembling while red in the face.

She must have been really focused on the work because she showed no sign of noticing my movement. She hadn’t even noticed that crouching down like that just about gave me a view of her modest chest through the collar of her sailor suit.

Oh, that’s right.

When I thought about it, I remembered this was a giant bow gun that fired fist-sized stones with enough force to dent a ship’s hull. It would use thick leaf springs and other things to thoroughly strengthen the string and it had no special mechanisms like pulleys or a hand crank, so it seemed unlikely she could pull the string back so many times in a row with those skinny arms.

But…

Um…

Then…

What does this mean?

Can I really walk right up and take that dangerous toy from her?

…No, no.

That can’t be it. No, no, no, no, no!! She might finish setting the string and stone the instant I run out and then smash my skull from head-on. Just because she’s stupidly crouching over, sticking her shorts-wearing butt backwards, and groaning in an oddly suggestive way doesn’t mean I can do anything so reckless! Don’t forget that you’re in the middle of a life-and-death exchange with a fleeing suspect!! Don’t laugh, Hayabusa, you need to keep a straight face!!

I decided to take a more careful route.

I filled my lungs with air and formed a megaphone with my hands.

And then I gave a shout.

“Boo!!!!!”

I immediately saw a sight that was rare even in my life as a detective.

A girl in a short-sleeved sailor suit and shorts had a stone-throwing bow gun pressed against the ground and was holding a metal ring-like part down with her feet while she used both hands to forcibly pull the string upwards.

My shout had caused her shoulders to jump and she hopped up a bit herself.

Her hands were still holding the straining string and she removed her legs from the bow gun itself.

What would happen then?

This was nothing as simple as a “twang”.

It was more of a series of crashes.

The force of the string sent the back end of the bow gun straight up into the girl’s jaw as a powerful uppercut. The bow gun itself may have been five or ten kilograms, so it was a weighty blunt weapon of steel and wood.

Her small form collapsed backwards like a toppled mannequin and her legs spread open in an M-shape. The ridiculous pose placed quite a burden on her shorts, but as she didn’t look embarrassed or try to squirm, I could only assume she had completely lost consciousness.

All I could do was bring a hand to my forehead.

Part 10 (Hishigami Mai — Day 10/03 21:30 - 21:45)

You could call it a sense of fellowship or an illusion of community, but once you were on the same boat, no one would suspect you. They cheaply assumed that everyone had gone through the same process to be here and thus everything was fine. And yet everyone around them was a complete stranger and they had no idea what any of those people were thinking.

Japan truly is a peaceful nation.

Anyway, the Sunekosuri and I slipped away from the group and down some stairs.

I had memorized the Yakata-II’s layout ahead of time, so I knew how to reach the ship’s hold on the lower levels and which routes would be the most deserted.

Sid Clouds had to have gathered materials brought in via the heliport to accumulate power for himself. In Japan, he would use Japanese Youkai. In Europe, he would use European fairies.

If what Jinnai Shinobu said was true, he was using a Kechibi and an Ubume.

It was up to luck whether we would reach the Amanojaku at the center of it all or not.

“B-but won’t they find it suspicious if they catch you in these worker’s corridors or stairways in an open-back dress?”

“There are multiple elevators and stairways. If you take the location of the facilities into consideration, you can figure out where you’re more or less likely to run into someone. You know how identical soba stands and convenience stores can be full of customers or completely empty depending on their location, right? This is the same. By noting the probable flow of people based on the layout, it isn’t difficult to choose a good route.”

“But isn’t that an issue of probability and statistics? It’s all over if one of the crew comes down this way on a whim.”

“Then it comes down to my posture and gait. I drank a disgusting cocktail earlier, so if I claim I’m lost with alcohol on my breath and flushed cheeks, they’ll just guide me out of the backyard. Besides, only the control room, engine room, or other facilities directly related to controlling the ship are actually off limits to normal passengers.”

Fortunately, I didn’t need to put on an act like that.

After descending the metal stairs to the bottom, we arrived at a “large box” with one of the walls missing. It was a floating object with the same area as a small school building. In other words, it was the ship’s hold.

The Sunekosuri spoke up in surprise while rubbing against my shins.

“There are piles of containers everywhere. This doesn’t feel like a luxury cruise ship. It’s more like a rough cargo ship.”

“There are 1700 passengers onboard. If you add in the crew needed to cater to them, a lot of supplies are needed to meet their needs. They probably carry thirty days’ worth of supplies at a time, but with all these containers, it wouldn’t be difficult to slip in an extra one or two.”

Incidentally, this was not the very bottom of the ship.

A device called the ballast tank was even lower. Basically, it was a weight using water. Several giant tanks were lined up and filled with seawater to maintain the ship’s balance when large waves on a stormy night might otherwise capsize it.

“B-but how are we supposed to find the suspicious occult items of Sid Cloud’s plan in all these containers? If we search blindly, it would take more than two weeks.”

I tilted my head and pulled a clump of plastic packaged “clay” from the chest of my dress.

“If worse comes to worst, can’t we blow up the bottom of the ship to sink the entire thing, onii-chan☆”

“No, we can’t! And it doesn’t matter how cutely you say it!!”

Well, that was a last resort.

If possible, I wanted to get some data on or traces of what Sid Clouds was trying to do and then get to destroying. And it was unclear how effective sinking the ship would be when it was at port and not out at sea.

“That leaves two methods.”

“Wh-what are they?”

“First, we use the layout to determine what the enemy is thinking. We throw out any optimistic ‘maybes’ or ‘perhapses’ and think about what we would do if we were in the enemy’s shoes and had to make things as difficult as possible for us. We don’t want anyone to find our secret container, but if we put it where no one can reach it, we can’t get to it either. So where in the piles do we put it? We do some profiling and find the right answer.”

“And what’s the second method?”

“That’s simple.” I pointed straight up. “We ask Sid Clouds himself. That would be fastest.”

I heard footsteps as a new figure descended the stairs. I turned that way and the Sunekosuri seemed to hesitantly raise his head. Unless he was intently staring at my panties, he would be looking at the same thing as me.

He had refined gray hair and muscles unbefitting of his age.

He wore a chic suit that seemed to be announcing to the world that his entire outfit was custom made.

He spoke as he stroked his fingertips along the metal railing.

“You knew this would happen.”

“Yeah. First of all, I didn’t have the overwhelming amount of prep time I would need to slip under the great CIA’s radar. However, you can’t exactly send in a group of masked men to the headquarters of your secret plan. I knew Sid Clouds himself or someone under his direct command would show up.”

“So you thought you would capture whoever showed up and get them to talk? That is too crude. And more importantly, too green.”

“But I wasn’t wrong, was I?”

I returned the “clay” to my cleavage.

Still stroking the railing, Sid Clouds calmly descended the stairs.

“I am not trying to teach a monster like you, but normally, the CIA does not dirty our own hands. We infiltrate areas around the world, but we have locals commit the crimes. We give guerrillas and terrorists funding and weapons or we capture mafia drug and weapons sellers so we can have them work for us instead of handing them over to the local justice system.”

He spoke smoothly.

“But I came here personally. Do you know why that is?”

As his fingertips slid along the railing, they sank down like a hot knife in butter.

They sank into the metal railing.

“That is because your death was guaranteed from the moment I showed up.”

I heard an unpleasant snapping sound.

It was the sound of him pulling the metal railing from the wall with one hand. The screws holding it in place burst off like buttons from a shirt. The gray-haired man now had a spear with a harsh, jagged end and he did not hesitate to throw it toward us.

In that instant, I was reminded of an imaginary weapon known as a potential energy mass weapon.

A metal column was dropped from satellite orbit to artificially recreate a meteor strike.

“!!”

I ignored the Sunekosuri who had a powerful resistance to purely physical attacks and I jumped to the side with all my strength. A moment later, the ship’s hold shook and the pile of containers crumbled. I say crumbled, but it looked more like it had been placed on a trampoline and launched upwards.

And this didn’t just apply to the ship’s hold.

That man caused the eighty thousand ton cruise ship to sink by at least fifty centimeters!

“Don’t look away.”

His voice was far too close by.

At some point, he had approached within fifty centimeters of me. He had caused all that damage just to jump down and get close.

He used his overwhelming strength as a weapon and crouched down.

“Are you seriously using my breasts' blind spot!?”

We exchanged fists two or three times.

By the time I jumped back, my left arm was dangling unnaturally by my side.

Dammit!! I thought I had let the force escape, but he messed up my joint! My method and timing were perfect, but his base strength is just too high!!

“Didn’t I tell you?”

He approached no further and reached for a nearby object.

It was a metal container.

Empty, it would weigh around five hundred kilograms. Packed full, it could reach maybe four tons. Yet he lifted the thing as easily as a plastic umbrella.

And…

“Your death was guaranteed from the moment I showed up.”

He threw it.

But he didn’t stop there, or even at five or ten of them.

He grabbed everything he could and threw and threw and threw and threw!

It was enough for the ship’s hold to rock. Everything shook so much that the giant ship felt unstable. It reminded me of a suspension bridge supported by an old, rusty wire.

“Tch. Are you trying to wear me down!?”

“The States demands certainty above all else, so we naturally end up choosing the least interesting of options.”

“Certainty? You mean bringing the Singer Song Liar story into reality and buying Japan? Are you really seeing that ridiculous machine-made story through to the end!?”

“Ha ha. That is a job for the people at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I really don’t care who stands on the center stage of history. As long as our national interests are protected, that is.”

At any rate, I ran in a large circle around Sid Clouds and avoided the downpour of containers. With that many mass weapons in the air, the small piles located here and there wouldn’t be enough to protect me. Hiding behind one would just get me crushed along with it.

I then turned my attention to his strength.

“The Ubume’s trial, hm? If you can hold the baby to the end as its weight increases infinitely, you gain the Obou-Jikara, right!?”

“You found the answer so soon? I suppose I should expect no less from Japan’s underworld.”

“Take a look at your shadow. It’s got four arms!!”

The legend of the Ubume was generally as follows:

When walking along the road at night, you would find a beautiful woman holding a baby and she would ask you to hold the baby. Now, if you refused, the Ubume herself would kill you.

But if you held the baby, it would grow heavier and heavier for some reason. If you couldn’t keep it up to the end, you would be crushed to death by the baby’s weight. It must have been a famous story at the time because parts of it showed up in the Yuki Onna and Nure Onna stories as well.

But if, in an exceptional case, you managed to hold the baby to the end without being crushed, the Ubume would praise you and give you a special power. That power as known as the Obou-Jikara. There were a number of sayings about that power. For example, some said it let you uproot a great tree on your own and others said it made an illusion of having four arms when used.

In which case…

“Sunekosuri!!”

My circle around Sid Clouds brought me back to the Sunekosuri , so I kicked him up with my toes and caught him in my still-usable right hand.

“(It’s about time I killed that bastard Sid. You’ll be helping.)”

“(Wh-what can I do!? I’m just a small dog!)”

“(No, you’re not. A bullet or a shell wouldn’t kill you. A direct hit from his fist might be trouble, but you can ignore the containers. And so…)”

I whispered some more to him and then threw him to the side.

The containers had been flying like shells from a warship’s gun firing at seventy shots per minute, but they stopped.

However, this was not him being kind. He had simply run out of containers within arm’s reach.

He cracked his neck and looked my way.

“I think I’ll kill that Youkai first. Is that okay?”

“I see you still don’t let pride get the better of you. But I’m the one you have to worry about. Looking the other way would be deadly.”

I pulled the same “clay” as before from my cleavage, but not a single new wrinkle appeared on his face.

“Do you think a mere five hundred grams is enough to kill me?”

“No, I don’t,” I answered with a smile. “What matters is that your strength comes from the Ubume legend. That’s so very important. After all…there is no way of overcoming the Ubume’s trial.”

Sid Clouds looked to his surroundings.

He seemed to have lost sight of the Sunekosuri’s small form. He had thrown the containers around and knocked over all the piles of them, so there was plenty of wreckage large enough to hide something the size of a stuffed animal.

“The only way to save yourself from the Ubume’s trial is to stick a short sword blade-up in the ground before accepting the challenge. If you’re crushed by the baby’s weight, it will be skewered by the blade, so the Ubume is forced to interrupt the trial before it’s over.”

The gray-haired man kicked up a container from the floor, grabbed it, and tossed it straight up. The gravity-defying guillotine destroyed the sprinkler on the ceiling far above and scattered water over the entire area.

“In other words, no one can complete it. There is no answer to the Ubume’s trial. What does it even mean to keep holding it ‘to the end’? What if the Ubume waits for a full century? So you used some kind of trick to make sure you weren’t crushed by the weight even if you couldn’t complete the trial. So if I pull out that prop, won’t you be crushed by the baby’s ever-increasing weight?”

Without batting an eye, Sid Clouds made an announcement in the artificial downpour.

“I will fill this water with an electric current.”

“That won’t kill the Sunekosuri.”

“But the electricity will be diverted around him. If I measure that anomaly, I can locate him.”

Tch. He really is clever.

Your average member of the underworld would have given up on the Sunekosuri. And even if not, I would have been able to redirect their focus back to me. But that wasn’t going to work here. He was going to use all of his strength to thoroughly crush the tiny doubt budding in his mind. He did not falter in the slightest, so there was no opening for me to attack.

However…

“Then how about I buy some time?”

“How?”

I charged straight toward him. He breathed lightly from his nose and our arms and legs intersected. I was more skilled, but his strength was far greater. In the blink of an eye, I heard several dull sounds. He grabbed my neck and held me up in the air.

He did not even make a victorious comment.

With the heavy sound of a solid hit from a metal bat, my body flew forcefully to the side. I slammed into the wall and crushed a thick power cable surrounded in a metal covering. I heard a zap and my vision was dyed in pure white.

“Gh…bah!!”

But more importantly, the current would flow through the water covering the floor and Sid Clouds would locate the Sunekosuri.

He had not bothered going through the process needed to kill the human named Hishigami Mai.

He had simply woven my actions in as a step in his plan to kill the Sunekosuri.

“There.”

Sid Clouds accurately turned his head and I weakly opened my mouth while slipping down to the bottom of the wall.

“By the way, was the ballast tank the right answer?”

That space took in tons of seawater to create a great weight that kept the ship from capsizing on stormy nights and it was located even further down than the ship’s hold.

The gray-haired man said nothing, but I heard him cutting across the pile of rubble that the ship’s hold had become.

“The Ubume kills people with the weight of its baby. Anyone who can’t take the weight is crushed to the ground along with the baby. That makes a floating cruise ship perfect. The large ship can withstand eighty thousand tons, so it can continue to float without ever letting the baby touch the bottom of the ocean.”

His silent eyes seemed to say “so what?”, but he suddenly came to a stop.

“You don’t want anyone to know about the baby, so the ballast tank full of seawater would be best. It’s surrounded by thick walls, it’s dangerous, and no one has any reason to go there, so you can hide whatever you want there. And if I know that, it’s not too difficult to deal with.”

“Wait.”

“If I throw some explosives into the ballast tank and blow a hole in the bottom of the ship, the baby will fall into the ocean. And if it reaches the bottom, your delayed Ubume trial will finally end!!”

“Where did that ‘clay’ you had go!?”

How naïve.

There was only ever one bomb. All I asked of the Sunekosuri was to open the ballast tank’s maintenance cover. If I honestly asked him to help me blow up the ship, that pacifist never would have helped.

And you focused so much on efficiency that you threw me horizontally across the ship’s hold to break the power cable on the wall. However, that wasn’t unexpected. I threw out any vague optimistic ‘maybes’, ‘perhapses’, and ‘surely he wouldn’ts’ and I thought about what I would do in your shoes if I had to make things as difficult as possible for me. Doing that naturally showed me what your future decisions would be.

I just had to think about what I would have done.

And what if I let go of an explosive with fuse attached while I was thrown through the air?

It’s time you found the answer, you idiot.

A tremendous heavy vibration shot up from the ballast tank below.

“Bh…gh…!!!???”

I heard a dull sound. It was an unpleasant sound like a large tree breaking between giant gears. It came from Sid Clouds’s spine. That bone made up from a series of smaller bones had its connections snapped apart. The weight being forcibly propped up by the eighty thousand ton displacement of the cruise ship was bearing down on that human frame, so his fate was sealed.

I slowly got up, pressed my right hand to my left shoulder, and heard a dull cracking sound.

“Give it up. There’s no saving you. And if you have nothing to protect, could you tell me the truth behind all this?”

“Not…y-yet… I-I…still…”

You’re kidding, right?

I heard a ton of thin fibers snapping as Sid Clouds continued standing without being crushed. I estimated the weight at around five hundred kilograms or maybe over a ton. Based on the records leftover from the cruel tortures of the medieval Europe that everyone knew from their RPGs, a victim lying face up could have weight slowly added up to about three hundred kilograms without dying from shock, but this was clearly past that limit.

“The baby’s weight…is crushing me. But you know what? Even if it isn’t complete…I still received the Obou-Jikara… So I can push it back. I can push back on the baby’s weight…with these abnormal muscle fibers.”

“Oh, honestly!!”

My mind turned toward the handgun hidden in my boot.

No, that wouldn’t work. If he can bear a weight of over a ton, his muscles have to be as tough as a concrete pillar. I used my “clay” already and a lead bullet would just bounce off.

Honestly. I’m really reaching for the Deadly Dragon Princess here!?

“I don’t have time for an interrogation, so I’ll ask once and you have one chance to answer me. Will you fall back here or will you continue? Choose whichever one you want. Depending on your answer, I might have to bring out the power tools.”

“Ha ha,” he laughed.

The burden on his body seemed to be a serious issue because his body was splitting open in places and his clothes were soaked with blood.

“Fall back here? If you like. We were holding out a helping hand for your country, but I suppose the freedom to bat that hand aside is part of national sovereignty. It might be fun to switch to a different progress manual and instead prepare to watch the blue light from safety.”

“?”

“But even if I fall back, it won’t stop her. You know that I always have someone even more powerful working under me, don’t you? I had hoped to use her as an emergency exit, but since she hasn’t shown up, she must be prioritizing the operation.”

I could not kill him and he could not take even a single step because of the great weight.

Even in our impasse, his bloody lips maintained a smile.

“She is powerful.”

“Even more than this?”

I couldn’t help but sound annoyed and his eyes narrowed as if he had wanted to hear that annoyance.

“I chose her, so she is definitely more powerful than me. Now that she has focused all of her resources on the operation, it is guaranteed to succeed.”

It looked like we were on separate parallel lines, but in our world, there was always a conclusion.

In this case, it came in the form of bullets.

That conclusion struck Sid Clouds once each in the head, the chest, and the gut.

But I hadn’t done it.

For one, no normal bullet could do anything to him. To take advantage of the Ubume’s weakness, it may have been forged from the same carbon steel as a Japanese sword.

One glance at the surprised look on Sid Clouds’s face was enough to know who had fired that magical bullet.

“…Ah…”

But he was not allowed to speak even a word.

As soon as his eyes rolled back in his head and he fainted, the final pillar was broken. A multitude of wet squishing sounds followed. That human form was crushed under a massive weight and made the dramatic transformation into a dark red stain spreading on the floor.

However…

“W-w-w-wah!? M-Mai-Mai-san!! Look!!”

“Oh, dear. Even after being crushed that badly, he’s still breathing. Just how tough is that Obou-Jikara?”

Even as a dark red slug-like creature measuring one hundred eighty centimeters, Sid Clouds continued to squirm.

This is hopeless. I should assume this guy isn’t going to die even if you kill him. I get the feeling he’d be back for revenge if someone dragged the Ubume’s baby up from the ocean bottom with a ship’s salvage crane.

But that wasn’t what I needed to focus on. Whatever the details, he couldn’t move now, so I could put him off until later.

I had to look up above.

I heard some light departing footsteps and I caught a glimpse of a maid uniform’s fluttering short skirt at the top of the stairs Sid Clouds had destroyed.

“That’s some fancy underwear. …Looks like she really doesn’t understand the concept of a maid.”

A handgun in the garter and spare magazines covering the underside of the skirt was far too exciting for a tidy and kind maid.

At any rate, this was the waitress I had taken a cocktail from while passing her by in the ship. She was apparently the CIA’s final boss. Since she was supposed to be stronger than Sid Clouds who was still moving after all that, it was sounding like a lot of trouble.

Part 11 (Jinnai Shinobu — Day 10/03 21:40 - 22:00)

The casino hall was wrapped in crazed excitement.

He really had fallen for it. In the Singer Song Liar story, I had easily established the ten thousand times multiplier penalty with my cheating bluff and by making him think the noise on the card reader was due to skimming, but in reality, it took a while after the game came to an end. After all, Kodama Ryou just kept complaining. When I thought about it, it was obvious, though. This wasn’t the score in a video game. We were talking about someone’s life and everything they owned. Even if he had gotten it all by dirty means.

“Ah…ahhh…aaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…”

The man before me had been robbed of the perfect order of his hair, clothes, expression, and aura and a noise I couldn’t quite call a voice escaped his mouth without end.

It had all turned out the same.

It was as if everything were following the story I had made and anything that didn’t fit was being corrected.

“Hey.”

I called out to the con artist who had fallen to his knees.

He didn’t respond, so I grabbed his collar with one hand and forced him up.

“Hey!”

“What…? Do you still want more after all that!?”

That’s right, you idiot.

Normally, I’d want to leave trash like you to die, but I can’t.

I felt a twitch in my right temple as I spoke to the con artist.

“At this rate, you’ll be killed by midday tomorrow.”

“…What?”

“You’ll be killed by an Ikiryou assassination Package using a Youkai called a Kechibi. It was assembled by the CIA. I know this probably sounds like something out of a movie, but you can choose how to use the time you have left. You can believe me and struggle to survive or laugh at me and be killed. It’s your choice.”

“Wait. Wh-what are you talking about? Who are you?”

“As I said, you can choose how to use the time you have left.”

I practically threw my words at that greasy loser from close range.

“But the current situation isn’t normal. There’s no other way a normal high school boy could win everything a professional con artist owns. So how about you catch on that something dangerous is brewing on a much deeper level than you think?”

That was when my cellphone rang in my pocket.

I let go of the con artist’s collar, turned around, and pulled out the phone.

“H-hey!! What am I supposed to do!? What do you mean I’ll be killed? Are you saying my despair still isn’t over!?”

He shouted something at me, but there was nothing more I could do.

I wasn’t even sure I could stop the Singer Song Liar story I had created. And if I didn’t, he would be assassinated at a set time and place no matter where he tried to hide.

That meant I could only keep moving.

I answered the phone and held it to my ear.

“Madoka?”

“Shinobu-kun, do you have any idea what you’ve gotten yourself involved in?”

That was faster than expected.

'This only happened at dawn in the Singer Song Liar story.

Should I rejoice at the change or will this lead to an even worse conclusion?

“You mean the collapse of the world economy due to Japan’s exported financial systems, the Japanese yen becoming scrap paper, and the sale of Japan in the name of supporting its recovery, right? Unfortunately, I’ve been placed in the very center of all that.”

“Shinobu-kun…”

“Sorry, but I’m the one that was placed ‘here’,” I said to cut her off. “Only someone ‘here’ can stop this, so instead of complaining, why don’t you help me? Have you contacted an accountant and tax adviser yet? I defeated the con artist named Kodama Ryou and won a ton of money. Although it is all Japanese yen which might be worthless this time tomorrow. I want to return it to the people he victimized. Can you help me with that?”

“I can, but do you really have time to get sidetracked with this?”

“I’m about to get started here. To be honest, I had to bait the hook before I could make my counterattack. Getting sidetracked here was necessary.”

After exchanging the necessary information, I ended the call with Madoka.

Depending on what happens, this might be our last conversation.

“Um, it’s Hafuri, right? I’m done here, so let’s get out of here.”

“Sigh… I’m glad you settled that with the original money still intact. Then again, we can’t have this all continuing ‘as planned’, so it’s a bit of a complicated feeling.”

We left the casino’s front entrance and the fox, tanuki, and badger hopped out of hiding. The Zashiki Warashi in a red yukata gave me an exasperated look.

“S-so how did it turn out?”

“Did it all go well?”

“After showing off like that, it would be no laughing matter if you lost everything!!”

The three noisy animals wouldn’t stop yelling, so I just shoved a folded memo toward them.

The tanuki gave hysterical shout.

“Kyah! Wh-what is this?”

“The phone number of the accountant managing the bank account. Call this number with the old lady once you get home. You can ask that accountant about the money you need. Don’t think about moving the money yourself. Leave it to the professional and you won’t be tricked again.”

I shoved it up against them.

“Don’t lose this, don’t show it to anyone, and hurry back to the old lady who must be worried sick that you suddenly vanished. That will settle everything.”

I left the three Youkai blinking in confusion and walked away from the casino with the Zashiki Warashi and Hyakki Yakou’s girl leader.

“Shinobu, volunteering for good deeds is fine, but what do we do now?”

“I can only tell you ‘what’s going to happen’.”

My right temple itched and I shrugged.

“In the Singer Song Liar story, we had a celebration party until past dawn and then a car bomb exploded on the early morning road. You carried me, we escaped into the mine, and the entire tunnel was blown up. …That much probably can’t be changed. Even if the details are a little different, we’ll still be attacked come morning and you’ll be taken hostage. And all to have me retrieve my lost suitcase.”

“Shinobu, that sounds like a pain in the ass. Do you really think I’ll do that?”

“But you did. Maybe once it actually happens, you’ll have a change of heart and decide to act out of character.”

Even I thought my tone was a little too careless.

“The car bomb is one thing, but that mountain has as many tunnels as an ant colony and it has to take a while to rig it all up with explosives. They attack in the morning, so they’re probably doing a final check of the mine right now. I don’t know how far in advance they set up the explosives, but they at least need to make sure the detonation signal can get in before they arm it. They were an unknown enemy until the very end of the Singer Song Liar story, but if we head to the mine now, we can run across them.”

On top of that, I had a feeling they had only decided to take an obvious hostage after I defeated Kodama Ryou, who had a connection with them. I had shown them they couldn’t let their guard down with me, so they had been forced to take a Youkai hostage which was probably more difficult than capturing a lion alive. For them, that had been the last card they had wanted to play.

“Not a bad idea,” said the Hyakki Yakou leader with a composed expression. “Then how about I contact my organization and have them make a quick attack?”

“You’re sounding dangerous again.”

The normally arrogant Zashiki Warashi began casually keeping some distance from the small girl.

Meanwhile, the leader girl did not seem to mind.

“I am their highest leader, so whether in a crowd or the dark, I always have a certain minimum force prepared.”

She pressed a hand to her ear and I assumed she was putting on a small headset, but…

“…Huh?”

“Hey, why do you sound so confused? Please don’t tell me you can’t contact anyone.”

“No, that shouldn’t be… How strange. Our standard security structure should prevent this from happening.”

I couldn’t help but hold my head in my hands.

It seemed the Singer Song Liar story was more powerful than I had imagined. Had the girl’s bodyguards’ equipment simply failed or had they been attacked by our enemies without anyone noticing? Both possibilities should never have been able to happen with Hyakki Yakou, supposedly the nation’s most powerful paranormal organization.

I was reminded of the fancy hotel in northern Fuuka Village where I had had my first encounter with Hyakki Yakou.

Then too, a Package had prophesied a slaughter and I was tossed around by that Package from beginning to end.

“I guess we have to do whatever we can,” I spat out as my right temple twitched. “Either way, we’ll be attacked come morning if we just wait around. No matter what we do, it can’t be worse than that.”

Part 12 (Uchimaku Hayabusa — Day 10/03 21:35 - 22:10)

After the Mystery Freak caught up, we both looked down on the suspect sprawled out on the ground with her eyes spinning.

Looking at her again, I realized she was even skinnier than Enbi. Her short-sleeve sailor shirt was not quite like a school uniform and her hot pants were so short you could just about see the base of her thighs. The string to the stone-throwing bow gun she had been using as a weapon must have been really hard to pull back because her palms were scraped red.

“What did you do, detective? A punch of justice against a minor girl? That must have felt really good.”

“Stop it, idiot. She took herself out. …Although it is true I led her in that direction.”

I heard a groan from the girl stretched out on the ground.

The first thing I did was present her with despair.

“This is the police.”

“Detective, did you forget your badge?”

“A badge from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department has no effect outside the city and you don’t need a badge when you catch them in the act.”

I heard a great shriek and the girl started looking restlessly around, so I kicked the bow gun away.

“A-ah, ah, ah, ah…”

“Give me your name, address, and occupation.”

“I-if I tell you, will you let me go? Heh. Eh heh heh.”

“No actual harm was done to me, so this can be settled with a simple obstruction of justice charge. That probably means a summary indictment and a fine of ten thousand yen. But if you prefer something more adolescent and cool-sounding, then maybe I should alter my interpretation of what happened. For example, that could have been attempted murder or a terrorist attack against the National Police Agency’s casino inspection team.”

“O-okay!? M-my name is Kozakura Sobiki! I’ll tell you!! I’ll tell you everything!!”

The girl had tears in her eyes as she flailed her arms around.

“We…you see, um, eh heh heh, we specialize in hardware cracking.”

“Cracking?”

“Detective, she means illegal ROMs for pachinko parlors or illegally skimming credit card data. Instead of using data or viruses, she’s an information criminal that uses physical devices.”

“L-lately we’ve started messing with cables too.”

This must have been awkward for her because Kozakura Sobiki wouldn’t look me in the eye and pressed her index fingers together in front of her chest.

“Y’know, like the lines connecting ATMs to banks or the cable TV selectors on telephone poles.”

“Oh? Don’t those things have a metal web thinner than a hair woven into the outer covering? I thought the security company was notified as soon that outer covering was broken.”

“No, no, no. Have you ever heard of alien crosstalk? If it isn’t fiber optic, the electrical signal will disturb the magnetic field around the cable. Even if you don’t break the covering and expose the metal wire, you can still attach a wiretap line right along that covering to steal the data-…”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

“…is what I’ve heard you might be able to do!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

My irritation must have gotten through to her because Kozakura Sobiki made a harsh course correction mid-sentence.

“The latest trend is the undersea cables. While city lines spread out like a spider web, there’s pretty much just the one going undersea. If you suck the data out of there, you can steal allll the communications from an entire city or even an entire nation. …Well, that’s the theory anyway. It’s just, um, hypothetical.”

“And?”

Oops.

Even I could tell my voice had dropped lower than necessary.

“Can you blame me for being scared!? I just got done working on the only line running from this island to the mainland and then a plainclothes cop shows up in the waterside electronics marketplace. I don’t think the people who are going to use the line would betray us, but I was certain it was an assassin with a fake police badge coming to silence me!!”

“Wait a second,” I cut in. “ ‘The people who are going to use the line’?”

“Uh.”

“You mean you weren’t working alone?”

“Yessss!!”

She must have gotten desperate because Kozakura Sobiki collapsed backwards and started flailing her limbs around and shouting.

Of course, I hadn’t gone through the proper process for interrogating her, so I had no right to keep her here against her will.

“The locals and the entertainment companies are fighting over whether to preserve or develop the mining island. They wanted me to attach a wiretap to the undersea cable so they could steal and destroy the data, so, well, it seemed like they wanted to destroy the relationship between the casinos and the card companies.”

“(So was she hired by the locals?)”

“(Only if whoever hired her was being honest.)”

“I don’t think it was them,” readily cut in Kozakura Sobiki. “Based on their interests, the locals would make the most sense, but the payment method was just too complex to be them. I don’t know who, but I think someone else was trying to interfere with the locals’ plan. It looks like they’re stealing a pre-existing criminal plan so the crime can be safely pinned on the locals while whoever it is does whatever they want.”

Wait, wait, wait.

Stealing the data sent between the casinos and the card companies was a big enough deal on its own. After all, that could easily destroy the island’s entire source of income. But was there something else beyond that?

The Mystery Freak cut in from the side.

“Hey, hey. What was the original plan? What were the locals trying to do and what were they trying to steal?”

“I don’t know that. All I did was take the wiretap they gave me and attach it to the undersea cable. But…”

“But?”

“Heh. Eh heh heh. I actually opened up the wiretap unit before attaching it. Y-you see, you have to teach yourself in this business, so you can learn a lot from someone else’s tech! And there was something clearly unnecessary stuffed in there along with the necessary equipment.”

“What was that?”

“At first, I thought it was a cylindrical coil, but it was actually a really old kind of money! That really made me mad. That had to be over seventy percent of the thing’s weight!! But when I thought about it later, I realized it might be an occult object meant to interfere with a criminal Package involving a Youkai.”

I brought a hand to my head.

If that was true, this had just gotten all the more troublesome.

“What Youkai has a connection to old money?”

“There are far too many for that to be useful,” said the Mystery Freak. “There’s the tanuki and foxes, the Onbu-Obake, the god of poverty, and pretty much all of the Zashiki Warashi types. For example, it could be an Usuhiki Warashi or a Notabariko.”

“Anyway,” said Kozakura Sobiki. “After I’d finished that job, a suspicious person claiming to be with the police showed up, so I thought they were trying to silence me. I thought they had found out I opened the wiretap unit or that I’d seen ‘that’.”

There’s still more?

Annoyed, I asked what she meant.

“And what is ‘that’?”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure myself, but…”

Part 13 (Hishigami Mai — Day 10/03 22:19 - 22:45)

Wow, I’m soaking wet!!

After the excitement of Sid Clouds making a lot of noise throwing containers everywhere and him being crushed into mincemeat on the floor, I had decided there was no chance of making a quiet escape. Instead, I entered the ballast tank, closed the maintenance cover, swam out the large hole in the bottom, and climbed up onto the port.

“Nn…kh.”

I used a needle and thread to sew up all the lacerations on my body and covered up the wounds themselves with the kit inside my makeup pouch.

That left doing something about the wrist and elbow of my dominant arm.

“Ahhh… Khhn…!”

“Why are you shouting in such a needlessly suggestive way!?”

“It’s a quick way of getting rid of the pain. It’s healthier than using morphine.”

After a series of dull sounds like the shifting of a manual transmission’s shift lever, my joints moved back into place. For anyplace that was split or missing, I used a dropper to fill them with a repairing liquid.

I really was torn up this time. And I have to be prepared for even more damage against that maid. Realistically, I should probably expect to have my heart stopped for a few seconds.

Since the final test was coming up, I stripped off the dress and changed into my original tank top and hot pants.

“Well, I dealt with the Ikiryou assassination Package using a Kechibi, so I think I’ll give myself more than fifty points.”

After shaking the seawater off, the Sunekosuri asked me a confused question.

“Eh? I know you dealt with Sid himself, but how did you do anything to the Package?”

“According to Jinnai Shinobu’s explanation, the Kechibi Package follows the target’s footsteps to find them and then the criminal kills them using the fact that damage to their Ikiryou also damages the person. The Kechibi isn’t a simple Ikiryou. It’s a special type you have to summon by rubbing the sandal bottoms together. In this case, the sandal footprints were one’s footsteps on the internet. By combining multiple types of big data, they can pinpoint an individual when they shouldn’t be able to.”

“I-I see…?”

“In addition to the normal casinos, Goldmine Island has Heavy Cruiser Island, a VR casino city where people can walk around and gamble with their avatar. It’s linked with a monster of a point card that has over forty million users and is accepted at drugstores, video rental stores, and online stores. It’s mostly done using a kind of data seen as a virtual currency.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You don’t get it? Something that large will have countless companies affiliated with them and can spread their sales far and wide. Everything from airplane tickets and hotel reservations to convenience stores and vending machines. So if you look through the purchase history, you can easily turn up an individual’s location.”

This of course had nothing to do with me since I used a fake name and not even I knew my real name.

“Y-you mean by combining the big data of multiple companies, they have a system to ‘regain’ the ability to search for an individual even though big data is made so you can’t link the data to an individual?”

“That’s really the whole point of the point card. It looks like a way of saving some money, but it’s actually an efficient system of gathering people’s purchasing information. The young wives smiling innocently at their receipts probably have no idea the kind of price tag human information has.”

I then gave the Sunekosuri a casual quiz.

“Anyway, let’s say they have a system of locating an individual from the chaotic pool of big data. They would need a massive information processing system that could use…no, misuse that to instantly search out a name from all the data. Now, where would the communication center for that be located?”

“Um, didn’t we head down to the ship’s hold to find the Kechibi itself? And it didn’t look like you ever found the correct container.”

“True, but there was a huge parabolic antenna on top of the ship. That was for communicating with a satellite. And from what I saw of the ship, it had a luxurious casino of its own. It was a large facility, but only a limited number of VIPs get to use it. They need giant servers to check on those VIPs’ cards, but the servers would be mostly unused. That means they can be used for information processing they don’t want anyone to know about.”

“Th-then…”

“I messed with the wiring just a bit before leaving the ship. A surge of electricity will be frying all of the ship’s electronics right about now. And if the servers don’t work, the Kechibi may still be there, but it can’t follow anyone’s ‘footsteps’. It’s just like you don’t need to fear a gun with a broken sight no matter how much ammo it has.”

“Y-you did all that in that limited time? Shudder.”

“You can’t leave with anything left undone, so a professional has to achieve results in the limited time they have.”

Now, then.

I was worried about the maid who had given up on Sid and run off, but I had to review the current power balance first.

Overall, there were two forces on Goldmine Island.

One side had obtained the Usuhiki Warashi Package, but wanted to stop it now that it was clearly leaving their control. They were probably the locals who were displeased with the policies of the casinos.

The other side was the CIA who had taken over the Usuhiki Warashi Package and was misusing it to arrive at the sale of Japan. They wanted to send the Usuhiki Warashi out of control even it meant slaughtering the locals with the Kechibi Package or the Ubume’s Obou-Jikara.

We had just crushed Sid Clouds of the CIA and his Kechibi Package, so the locals would be getting more active.

Now, what exactly should I do now?

“Well, I doubt the CIA maid is going to sit idly by just because they had their superior position taken from them. That type will use an embassy, a consulate, or a military base to ‘legitimately’ return home if things start getting dangerous. Since she’s still in hiding, she must still be motivated. That means she’ll try to reverse what we’ve done, even if she has to force it.”

“But you took out that muscular Sid guy and the Kechibi Package, right? D-do they still have some other secret weapon!?”

“Of course they do. And it’s their biggest one.”

Mh, my tank top is sticking to me more than usual. Is it because of the seawater?

“The Amanojaku. That final weapon bends reality in accordance with Singer Song Liar’s automatically created story. Even now, it must be optimizing everything, but I bet that maid will overclock the thing to boost its ability to change the flow of events. If so, she’ll need direct contact with the Amanojaku’s core.”

“The Amanojaku’s…core?”

The Sunekosuri scratched his ear with his back leg.

“Ah! You mean that Jinnai Shinobu boy!?”

“Yes, that’s part of it,” I agreed. “But he’s probably just the key. There’s also a keyhole to stick that key in. But where are the actual ceremonial grounds? It has to have a constant connection to Jinnai Shinobu, it has to be overwritten with a collection of lies that symbolize the Amanojaku, and yet it has to be completely hidden from our eyes.”

“Wouldn’t that be the story Jinnai Shinobu created?”

“You mean they left it up to the automatic creation software? That would be too unstable for a Youkai’s permanent location. But what other symbol of lies is there? The virtual world? But the VR casino city is already part of the Usuhiki Warashi’s framework, so using that would add the risk of a conflict between them. Maybe it could be a restaurant that lies about the source of its food or a replica hot spring with no real benefit? I’m not sure what it could be at this point.”

“Then…”

“Either way, the maid will definitely be approaching Jinnai Shinobu. It looks like we can only wait until then to intercept her. If she takes him away, she’ll have us in checkmate.”

Didn’t he go with Hyakki Yakou’s young lady?

That meant I could contact her to figure out where he was, but I was a little worried about taking action before I had all the necessary pieces of the puzzle.

I looked reluctantly up at the moon in the night sky, tried to think more about the Amanojaku’s location, and suddenly noticed something odd.

“Huh?

I had a thought as I looked up at the moon.

Could it be…?

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