Volume 6, Chapter 4: ???

Part 1 (3rd person)

Something was wrong.

The individual events were barely related, so looking at them individually revealed little. But if one took a step back and looked at the scene as a whole, something would feel horribly off. It was like the difference between a single piece and the entire jigsaw puzzle.

“A largescale power outage has hit Hokkaido. While running from the police, a driver lost control and ran into a transformer facility. Five elderly residents have died because they were using medical breathing machines at home. The police have said they did the best they could to apprehend the suspect, but..”

“New-chan > This has completely buried the chairman’s scandal, hasn’t it? I wonder if he caused this trouble to help with damage control.”

No-name blogs and SNS sites were filled with baseless conspiracy theories. And sadly, those useless opinions ended up burying the truth in a flood of information, so no one knew what was really going on. They simply felt a vague sense of unease.

“Town gas in the Tokai region is still shut down. An emergency inspection is being performed after a cyber-attack of unknown origin attempted to rewrite the program controlling the internal pressure of the underground pipes, but the residents are demanding service be restored as soon as possible.”

“Eruko > Water, power, gas, internet.. All the major pipelines of the country’s infrastructure are being attacked. The sewage system is the one that actually scares me the most. It connects to every house and it’s full of gas and waste. Set it alight and toxic dioxin will burst into every single house. Gas masks are thirty thousand yen at the cheapest, but it’s probably worth that price given the situation.”

Products vanished from convenience store shelves. A man who had created a homemade shelter in his yard was invited onto a talk show. The mysterious turn of events influenced the stocks of corporations that sold disaster prevention and outdoor goods and the nation’s tension gradually grew.

“An N Alert was sent out in error. Early this morning, a biological weapon alert was sent out to the entire Kanto region, but it turns out it was due to a Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare worker who failed to set the system to training mode. This is the third erroneous N Alert this month alone, so the Minster of Health, Labor, and Welfare has sworn he will crack down on any undisciplined workers.”

“Packy > Um, this isn’t the Boy who Cried Wolf. If you keep sending out false alarms, no one’s gonna believe it when something does happen.”

The news was repeated on TV ad nauseam to ensure no one was misled by the false alarm, but that only spread the absurd rumors further. It almost seemed the people living their boring lives wanted to believe the lies.

“I’m worried about this country. I’ve studied abroad in London, Paris, and New York, so I know how great their crisis management systems are. Compared to them, Japan is awfully unprepared.”

“Nekosuke > Don’t sound so carefree about it, four eyes. But..it’s possible that rumor is true. Y’know, the one about a huge nuclear shelter for VIPs being prepared in Nagatacho Station next to the National Diet building. Maybe that’s why they don’t seem worried.”

Was that a prophecy based on a sense of smell they rarely used or was it a hope not even they knew they had?

Either way, something was about to happen.

There was no stopping it.

Part 2 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

Maybe the shipments had been delayed by the spreading panic or some housewife had decided to stock up meaninglessly, but the convenience store shelves were empty and I missed out on eating lunch.

The trains had been stopped for a few days due to signal trouble and small traffic jams had popped up here and there. While I complained in my heart that Tokyo was a real pain in the ass to live in once things went wrong, I made my way to Minato.

Keijou Ijuku University was there.

The campus was filled with school buildings and laboratories, but I visited the big building known as the “Headquarters” where the board of directors and management were gathered.

“Detective.”

“What is a middle school girl doing on a college campus?”

“Open! Campus!! It’s October, remember? The college is open to anyone.”

“Excuse me, this girl is trespassing. Yes, yes. Can I leave her with you? Please get her out of here ASAP. Yes, thank you.”

“Hey!! Don’t sell me off to that old janitor!!”

The Mystery Freak started assaulting a police officer, but in a cutely sulky kind of way. As usual, she was more or less wearing a swimsuit with a character scarf added on. Just as I was wondering what to do about her, a familiar face approached with a smile.

“Long time no see, Uchimaku-kun. ..I thought Minori was pulling my leg when she told me, but it looks like a police officer really is dragging around a middle school girl in a swimsuit.”

“Please don’t say that!”

I could tell my future was on the line here, so I immediately corrected her.

The woman was named Tsugawa San. She was a scientist girl with long, wavy chestnut hair. She wore a crisp lab coat over her skirt and her soft and fluffy sweater. That unbalanced look had gathered attention even when we were students. Of course, she was actually a gentle person with drooping eyes.

What’s her title now anyway? Assistant professor? Associate professor? It changes so much I can’t remember.

She had a complex about her given name, so she got upset whenever someone used it with the “-san” honorific. She didn’t seem to like being “San-san”.

That was when another old upperclassman of mine, an assistant producer from Hachi TV named Atou Minori, showed up. She wore a rough top, slender pants, a hairpin to hold up her black hair, and a choker around her neck, so her tastes hadn’t changed since we were students either.

“Hey, Hayabusa-kun. It’s been a while since you visited the school here, hasn’t it?”

“What are you doing here when you’ve already graduated? You’ll just get in the way.”

“I pop in to help with documentaries on summer break experiments and things like that. But I’m starting to remember old times with all of us here. Wait..old times? I’m turning into an old lady, aren’t I!?”

That was when I heard an odd sound.

I looked over to find the Mystery Freak growling like a fierce dog restrained by a chain.

Tsugawa smiled.

“Yeah, we were in different departments, but we joined the same club. I forget what excuse of a name we gave it, but we just used it to go out drinking. We gathered the students from Intellectual Villages around the country. That really was a happy time. And you had the best taste in restaurants and bars, Uchimaku-kun. You never seemed to choose a dud.”

“C’mon, I wasn’t that good.”

“But the best drinks were the bottles you had in your room. The Jinnai Brewery almost scares me! They kept sending you tons of junmai daiginjo good enough for the Ise Shrine! Pretty much every weekend, we hung out in your room getting drunk off our asses until morning!”

Enbi was growling even louder and her face had grown so red I half-expected steam to rise from her head. I didn’t quite get it, but it was unusual for her to take so much damage.

“I! Can’t! Stand!!! This!!!!”

“Can’t stand what, Mystery Fre- ah, that’s just creepy!! Don’t shove that scarf’s severed head into my face!? It looks way too realistic up close!!”

“It’s Suneky the Sunekosuri!!”

Tsugawa laughed.

“Um, miss, you’re never going to win over Uchimaku-kun like that.”

“Grr?”

“He’s a complete pervert with glasses, a tight skirt, and a garter belt as his Three Sacred Treasures. If you pull on the garter belt so it snaps against your leg, he just can’t help but look.”

“Bfh!? Wait! No! Don’t! Don’t tell her-..!”

“His ideal woman is a female teacher. Such a troublesome fetish.”

“Nooo!”

“But unfortunately, the perfect beautiful teacher that he imagines will strictly but kindly guide him would be younger than him nowadays.”

“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!???”

As I screamed, Enbi pulled out her smartphone and started whispering into it. I didn’t even want to know what audio notes she was taking.

At any rate..

“We can keep talking on the way. Come with me.”

“Oh, sure.”

“You’re a detective, so you already know the basic information, right?”

Tsugawa handed me a large pamphlet as she spoke. It looked less like a proper document and more like an advertisement meant to catch the eye.

I read aloud the caption written next to the smiling elderly man on the cover.

“The leading researcher into psychic powers: Matsukai Hiroshi, Professor of Human Parapsychology Information Engineering.”

“Don’t let that ‘leading researcher’ part fool you. No other university in the nation has a department as ridiculous as Human Parapsychology Information Engineering. It’s like saying you serve the original mille crepe ramen.”

Atou Minori jokingly cut in from the side as I flipped through the pamphlet (to double check on the information) while walking.

“Help from PSI_ver_RAIN (14) was used to gather objective and universal sample data.”

Minori laughed.

“PSI_ver_RAIN is a psychic middle school girl. Or rather, she’s an online idol that pretends to be one. She wears swimsuits, sings, and bends spoons on video sites and the like. Her supposed psychic powers are all over the place: clairvoyance, telekinesis, healing, etc. She’s more convenient than a Swiss army knife.”

Of course, she was better known as someone who danced with 3D models based on Vocanoids than as someone who could bend spoons with her mind.

“She’s appeared on our show a few times, but based on the fans’ reactions, they see her psychic powers as part of her character instead of something real. Y’know, like the airheaded idols who claim to be from some other planet or the ones who dress in costumes and claim to be a fruit spirit. Basically, if they’re cute, anything goes.”

“Can you really use a screenname in a thesis paper?”

“Normally, no. But there have been cases where someone like a national comedian who wrote a book that got translated into fourteen languages eventually published a thesis under a stage name or penname. They forced this through using those precedents.”

My former upperclassmen climbed the stairs with their heels clacking on the steps.

“Not to mention that Matsukai Hiroshi himself is an incredibly famous professor. It’s to the point that I feel like posting a sign in front of his lab saying ‘The Constitution of the Empire of Japan does not apply beyond this point’.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Don’t you mean the Constitution of Japan?”

“That’s just how out-there he is. It’s kind of amazing he hasn’t been arrested. Well, he is talented, so maybe he has someone secretly burying corpses for him.”

That was hardly a laughing matter to a police officer.

And..

“Who would have thought that eccentric professor would end up sliced in two inside a locked room?”

The strobe light of camera flashes reached the hallway from the open door.

I peeked inside and found the interior covered in red. It was filled with a strange unpleasant odor that was not simply blood. For being a “laboratory”, it was not filled with largescale research equipment. Other than the desktop computer on the table, I couldn’t see anything that looked like it could be used for work. Instead of a place filled with the hope of making an earthshaking discovery, it looked like a room meant to hide an eccentric as a way to keep up appearances.

But the center of the room was what mattered most.

The red-dyed star of the scene was lying face up and chopped in two just below the navel. I’ll leave out the details of what was sticking out from the cut, but it didn’t look like it had been done with a sharp blade or with any concern for the positions of the bones or muscles. Overall, it seemed to have been done quite forcefully.

I put on gloves and faced my upperclassmen.

“Thanks for guiding me here. I can take care of myself now.”

“Can we watch? We won’t step inside.”

“If you film this on a pen CCD and show it on your show, you’ll get sued.”

I held back the Mystery Freak as she nonchalantly started into the room, I warned Atou Minori, and I went inside myself.

The crime scene investigation was still ongoing, but the area around the corpse had been dealt with first so they could get an autopsy done as quickly as possible. The forensics team was at the stage of discussing how to transport the corpse without its “contents” spilling out.

Pieces of evidence had been placed inside clear plastic bags and one of them was a card key.

“That was in his coat’s inner pocket. That’s what makes this a ‘locked room’,” explained one of them forensics team members.

“Did anything about this catch your interest? Other than the locked room part, that is”

“His wallet and the hard disk containing all his research data were untouched, but his belt is gone.”

“His belt?”

“Um, he was, well, a strange person, so it’s possible he wasn’t wearing one to begin with.”

“I’ll look into it when questioning people.”

I circled around the corpse and into the back of the room to check around the computer.

Wow, this is pretty old.

It was probably only used for email, writing reports, and to operate the supercomputer located in another room. The somewhat yellowed home computer was connected to a hard disk by a cable, but it wasn’t a convenient portable size like a USB memory stick or a data chip. I began to wonder if he stored everything on the cloud.

Then I heard the Mystery Freak sounding bored in the hallway.

“Detectiiive.”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t you be focused on something else instead?”

“You mean that nonsense?”

“But now the state-run news is talking about it and not just the talk shows. Some idiot leaked the whole case on a video site, so all the stations are going nuts. But the reporter’s club of Japanese mass media is pretty strong. If they all ignored this, no one would pay any attention to some leaked info. That means the police are half-admitting it already, doesn’t it?”

“Minori-san, you aren’t secretly recording this, are you?”

“Of course.”

“Of course you are or of course you aren’t?”

“Gh.. Sorry, Hayabusa-kun, but of course I am. I’ll be more careful in the future.”

She pulled her cellphone from her pocket, operated it while I was watching, and raised both of her hands in defeat.

After confirming it was off, I started speaking again.

“Do you think a psychic murder is actually possible? Based on common knowledge anyway?”

“Why not? Packages that include Youkai are used for crimes all the time.”

“Y’know, that’s a lot like saying little grays must exist because you found a dinosaur fossil. Don’t accept this because of something completely different. It’s a non sequitur.”

“But theses on psychic powers are starting to be seen as valid evidence in court. Or at least, the prosecution can submit it and the court will allow it.”

“So they’re going to conclude that psychic powers have been scientifically established as a deadly weapon, are they? I can already tell this is going to be the world’s silliest trial.”

“Ee hee hee. There are official records in England of people being taken to court over whether a magic cabal cursed them or not or whether some secret ceremony was leaked or not. The judgment papers are still there and everything.”

The problem was the thesis paper on psychic powers published by the eccentric professor lying in two pieces on the floor.

Naturally, society at large saw him as a fraud. They doubted the thesis even more than the theories that video games rotted the brain. But no matter how ridiculous it was, a thesis was a thesis once it was submitted. That status came with a certain power.

Forensic science was pretty well known, but what even counted as “scientific”?

A lot of people thought it was any objective data that could be reproduced with experiments or that it was never-changing theories and equations someone had calculated out, but that was completely wrong.

In the end, it came down to what people believed was true. In research related to space or particles, the result of a single experiment could overturn everything we thought we knew and the equations used a year ago would become entirely useless. Even though what to research had been determined by those equations and billions of yen of tax money had been pumped into it, no one hung their head at the new discovery. When it came down to it, even fabricated theses were held up as “scientific” until they were found out.

So-called “absolute science” changed surprisingly often and people would readily accept ideas that were barely understood but “probably” worked like this or that were “theoretically sound” but had not been remotely proven. The same was true of forensic science. And even if it was wrong, it was not considered a crime as long as no one was “maliciously aware” of the mistake. It was a lot like a politician’s apology. As long as you didn’t know about it before hand, you were in the clear.

That was the case this time, too.

Once it was placed in the category of “scientific” any thesis was treated as such.

The thesis was 99.9% bullshit, but some idiot insisted that it wasn’t 100% disproven. And once that happened, it didn’t matter how much everyone else opposed it. In the closed courtroom, a psychic murder was considered possible and the trial had to continue on that assumption. After all, it was a proper “scientific” thesis, wasn’t it? So it had to be perfectly acceptable in a “scientific” courtroom. From there, the judgment was made. The defendant was guilty of murdering the victim with psychic powers and would be imprisoned for life.

The judicial system? Who cares, right?

“But to completely eliminate the idea that psychic murders are possible, you would have to objectively prove that psychic powers don’t exist.”

“Nonsense. It’s not even worth thinking about. They don’t exist.”

“But, but. Actually proving it is surprisingly difficult. It’s what you call the Devil’s Proof. Even if you revealed the trick behind all self-styled psychics around the world, you’re done for as soon as someone argues that someone with psychic powers might be living deep in the mountains or something.”

“So that means the top suspect is..?”

“PSI_ver_RAIN. That psychic middle school girl had a personal connection to the eccentric professor since he got her help to gather sample data. She’s currently missing, but that caption might just change to ‘on the run’ before long.”

My head started to hurt.

Has this country been thrown into some mysterious space where tabloid articles come true?

“Some of the higher ups in the police apparently want to end this case as quickly as possible even if it means false charges.”

“Huh? The rumors I picked up said a politician wants to settle this sensational case to make himself look like a great hero just before the national elections.”

I held my head in a hand as I listened to my former upperclassmen cheerfully discuss the case.

My condolences, Matsukai-san. Your own thesis is dragging us further away from the truth of your murder. Maybe that’s your own fault, but did you have to make it the police’s problem too?

Part 3 (Jinnai Shinobu)

The lunch break came to an end and fifth period began.

It seemed like the stupidest possible time for home ec. Especially a cooking lesson.

“Ohhh, Shinobu-kun. How do I peel an onion?”

“Potatoes and carrots are one thing, but you can’t even do onions, Madoka-san!?”

She wore an apron over her sailor uniform and a triangular cloth on her head even though I doubted anyone ever actually wore one in the real world. Kotemitsu Madoka had transformed into a wonderfully innocent-looking financial monster, but it turned out she was a little too innocent. A kindergartner would’ve been more help.

Of course, my parents made all my meals, so I couldn’t cook for myself either.

My classmate looked like the perfect young wife, but she was pouting her lips and complaining.

“Ehhh? But doesn’t food just appear when you’re hungry? And with vending machines, you just have to know how to put a coin in. I doubt many people want to know how it works on the inside.”

“Oh, no! Madoka-san’s feminine appeal is dropping fast! And the worst part is she doesn’t even realize it!!”

“Is it that bad?”

“Your innermost thoughts are coming right out! You aren’t supposed to let guys see that!!”

The dish we were tasked with making was pork cooked in ginger, which seemed way too heavy for the period after lunch.

Our cooking station was oddly clean. The water and ingredients were Intellectual Village-made, but the plates and cooking utensils left at school could never have passed an inspection by a clean freak, so some kind of mystery cleaning squad must have infiltrated the school the night before.

“By the way, Madoka, what do you eat for a midnight snack? You respond immediately whenever I email you, so I know you’re active late at night.”

“Eh? I just make a call to my 24/7 room service.”

“Whoa!! Now I’m jealous!!”

Madoka frowned as she picked at the surface of the onion.

“The net idols have been a real pain lately. They don’t use an advertising agency but still gather a ton of attention. Ones like PSI_ver_RAIN can get thirty million views on a new song’s PV in less than twenty-four hours. That’s more influential than an ad during golden week. Can you believe that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I have heard people talking about how cute Rain-chan is.”

“One silly comment about being hooked on Neko Manma’s Ishikari special and the stocks shoot up! How am I supposed to handle that with an autonomous investment program!? Wars and hurricanes at least have some warning!!”

Based on how angry Madoka-san was, I could guess she had lost a ton of money thanks to this Rain-chan.

I was afraid to ask exactly how much, though.

Nagisa-chan, my childhood friend and one of the world’s three greatest yanderes, was in top form at another cooking station. She was leaning on her boyfriend Akechi-kun and placing her head on his shoulder.

“Eh heh heh. Look, Akechi-kun. You just have to go like this and then like this. See? It’s shaped like a heart. Isn’t it pretty? It’s a crystallization of our love. Heh heh.”

“Y-yes, I suppose so. But you’re scaring me with how smoothly you’re using that knife..”

“And the most important part is adding in a secret ingredient. Eh heh heh heh heh heh.”

“Wait, please wait. Don’t put that in there. Not your hair. It won’t even dissolve. And I only confessed ten minutes ago, so isn’t it a little soon for that!? Waiiiiit!!”

I prayed for his happiness in my heart.

Good luck, Akechi Boy. Nagisa’s love is sweeter than chocolate, thicker than coal tar, and deadlier than tetrodotoxin, but not even I know what awaits you if you stick with it. Let’s see if you can outlast and arrive at that unseen frontier.

And..

“Ohhhh!! Jinnai, help!! I don’t know how to deal with Nagisa-chan!!”

“Don’t come crying to her ex, you idiot! Don’t you have any pride!?”

Part 4 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

I finished my investigation for the time being and parted ways with my former upperclassmen. As I’d said before, I hadn’t had any lunch because the convenience store shelves were empty. I was starving, so I let another detective take my place, took a break, and used the university dining hall for the first time in forever. They were about to transport the body, so we wanted some police officers to walk around the area and gather attention elsewhere. It was a little late for lunch, so I wasn’t going to bother too many students even if I grabbed a bite to eat.

“You can eat right after looking at a corpse chopped in two with its organs sticking out? You’re really one of us, aren’t you?”

“It’s like being a doctor. Only someone who can get used to it can stick with the job for long. Sad as that is.”

As a young police officer, I had been taught not to get too fixated on the corpses and I had taken that to heart as much as I could. Some said we needed to get angry about people’s deaths, but after seeing so many people led to revenge, it all felt so fruitless. It was like reading a single book containing a dozen different short stories about a child dying of some horrible disease. Sure it’s a sad story, but so what?

“Wow, you can get a lot of food for cheap here. They even have cutlet curry. Cutlet curry! Not only do you get curry, but there’s a cutlet on top for only five hundred yen! And it’s got a ton of vegetables too!!”

“I think the best deal is the seafood bowl. They didn’t have the beef tongue meal when I was here. Is it a new addition? I guess I’ll try it.”

As we spoke, we made our order and received our trays.

There were a lot of girls in fairly showy miniskirts. Well, it was the end of October, so they were probably freshmen. They had escaped the long, long tunnel of entrance exams, finished their baptism in this new life, made it through their first summer break, and were finally truly fitting into their college life. It was probably the most carefree time for them.

“But..”

I didn’t see how I stood out that much, but I was gathering a lot of attention. From the actual college students, it may have been like seeing an old-looking high schooler in your middle school. It made me sad as an alumnus.

“Gulp! Gulp!! Damn, this cutlet curry is actually really good! I was expecting the meat to be really tough and the fried coating to come off the second you poked it with your fork!! Munch, munch!!”

“No, wait. It’s probably the middle school girl in an inappropriate swimsuit that’s gathering all the attention.”

“Eh? I hope you’re joking. Everyone’s curious about the police detective in a suit hanging around near the scene of a murder.”

“Hah hah hah. Yeah, right.”

My beef tongue was a simple dish sliced thin and cooked in salt, but the flavor wasn’t bad. The firmness of the tongue was still there. It was nice enough that I considered adding it to the rotation for when I was tired of the usual pork and ginger or chicken and egg bowl.

“Hand me your scarf, Mystery Freak. You’re going to get curry on it.”

“Nn.”

“C’mon, you don’t want to ruin that..what is it? A Rokuro Dog?”

“It’s Suneky!!”

We continued chatting like that for a while.

“Hey, detective, what do you think of this stuff with PSI_ver_RAIN? A psychic murder! A torso bisected!”

“That nonsense isn’t worth the investigation’s time.”

“But she was here on campus to help with his research today. And she completely vanished after the murder happened.”

“Are you saying she’s suspicious even i-->>

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