The Detective is Already Dead

Chapter 135: Prologue, four years ago

Chapter 135: Prologue, four years ago

It had been about a month since the incident with Krone at Sun House. As the Ace Detective, I'd continued my investigation of Seed's organization SPES and learned that their reach had finally extended to Japan.

On that day last month, Boy K. had said that he wanted to become the type of person who'd reach out to help those in front of him. However, the area he could reach was already being eroded by an invisible poison.

His middle school was being flooded with a certain drug that was being backed by low-level SPES supporters. Back when I first had the Men in Black investigate this town, signs of that incident had already been showing.

It's time, I thought.

Boy K. and I would change the future. The phrasing may have sounded grandiose, but it was true. This wasn't an empty dream or a fairy tale.

To us, this was indisputable reality.

That was why I was sitting here now, waiting for something new to begin. What's that? You're asking where "here" was?

Well—

"We are waiting for one final passenger on this flight."

As the announcement indicated, this was a plane. If all went according to schedule, a certain incident would take place while we were at ten thousand meters in the air. I was sitting in this window seat so that I could resolve it, as a detective.

The seat next to mine was empty.

I was waiting for the person who was supposed to sit there.

That said, we hadn't arranged to meet. Even if he appeared on time, he probably wouldn't notice me.

Right now, I was my true self.

I'd stripped off the mask of Gekka Shirogane and was there under my code name, Siesta.

"I wonder what you'll think when you see my real face," I murmured. It wasn't the first time I'd had that thought.

Will he think I'm beautiful?

Never mind that. As long as he showed up, nothing else mattered. I'd see him again, and then, and then—

"..."

I held my left hand down with my right.

This wasn't like me at all. My hand was trembling slightly. Would the kid really come?

This was him, after all. Had he gotten pulled into some other incident before he could get dragged into my plan?

I got to work on the next tough question.

If he did come to me, what should I call him? "Kid"? No, that would be weird; we were actually the same age.

"Kimihiko," then? That sounded overly familiar.

"Mr. Kimizuka"? It didn't seem like something I'd say. "I wonder if he has a code name."

If he did, it would be easier to just call him that... Now that I was thinking about it, this was surprisingly hard. Why did I have to stress out over this, of all things? I was getting increasingly annoyed.

Actually, since I hadn't seen him lately, I'd forgotten his face. What did he look like? I was pretty sure he'd had relatively normal features, but his eyes had seemed kind of spiritless and lonely, as if he'd given up on everything. That smile he flashed sometimes was a little cute, except it was only one of his masks. I was sure that last smile he'd shown me had been his real one, though.

And then, that's right—

That profile. The one that seemed specifically designed for sighing.

The relief almost made my face relax into a smile. Desperately curbing that impulse, I pretended to be asleep.

I couldn't let him figure it out.

He couldn't know Gekka was here right now.

I couldn't let him notice this feeling, even if it was making me giddy enough to dance.

With my eyes closed, listening to the sound of my own racing heart, I felt him there.

It really was him. Someone like me was here, right now, right next to me. "Yeesh. Unfair," the boy grumbled. He was probably recalling the events that

had brought him here.

The word I'd heard on that earlier occasion seemed to have become a habit for him.

In that case, I'd keep using the simplest words to cancel out all the disasters that fell on him. I'd tell him this world, with all its unfairness, was ridiculous.

Soon after that, with all of the flight's passengers onboard, the plane closed its door and began to taxi down the runway.

We would soar upward of ten thousand meters.

Our—no, the detective and her assistant's—dazzling adventure was about to begin.

First...

When I listened carefully, I heard a voice. "Is there a detective on the plane?"