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After being exposed to one hundred, one thousand, or even more Jinmensou – which were symbols of lies – her presence would fade to the very limit.

Even so, she had returned to her normal life.

And it was all thanks to the detective who had arrested the despicable man who had killed Tomoe’s real father and tried to take her best friend from her.

“Tomoe-chan, what are you going to put on that form?”

“Oh, the one for what I want to be when I grow up? Honestly, can’t they wait until we’re third years? It’s as embarrassing as an essay in elementary school, so my hand stops whenever I try to write something.”

“Eh heh heh. You’re going to be a police officer, aren’t you?”

“Wha-!? Wait! I never said that!! And you don’t get to decide what I’ll be!!”

As they were arguing, the image on the TV suddenly changed.

“We will be interrupting this program for some breaking news.”

“?”

There had not been any proper program playing in the first place. It had been nothing but information about the stopped electricity or water. The girls’ apartment complex had been miraculously spared those inconveniences, though. At any rate, this breaking news had to be something with even more impact.

As they looked to the screen with that in mind, the announcer read off the news.

“At just past two this afternoon, there was a shooter at Minato’s Private Keijou Ijuku University. The suspect is Uchimaku Hayabusa. He is a detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Division 1, so he is carrying a handgun and is on the run along with the suspect of a different murder. The suspect has shot and killed one victim and his connection to another body found nearby is under investigation. If any nearby residents see him, please do not approach him. I repeat, at just past two this afternoon..”

They did not understand.

It may have been from his driver’s license, but a picture of his face was displayed next to the announcer. It looked eerily unhealthy and seemed horribly wrong to anyone who knew him.

What was this?

What had happened?

Tomoe’s mouth flapped opened and closed as she wondered those things and she finally turned toward her best friend.

“..Huh? Mio???”

At first, she thought Tsumada Mio’s “presence” had vanished again.

But that was not the case. Not even Hachikawa Tomoe knew the exact rules or conditions, but Mio only ever vanished in a group of people. She doubted the girl would vanish this easily when they were alone together.

So was she really gone?

But where had she gone?

“Mio!!”

Part 9 (Jinnai Shinobu)

After the cooking lesson in home ec, math class began while the food weighed heavily on my stomach. Surprisingly, having your stomach this full actually kept you from feeling sleepy.

In the next seat over, Akechi-kun had his forehead pressed to his desk, but that wasn’t because he was sleepy. It had more to do with the ridiculous amount of the pork and ginger meal (Nagisa’s love-filled special recipe) he had eaten. It was a mixture of pain, resignation, and (for some reason) ecstasy. The food had gone in through his mouth, but he had the face of a guy who had taken it up the ass. The fool hadn’t learned to empty his mind when eating Nagisa’s cooking. The flavor alone was perfect, but thinking about what was inside it would kill your heart. He had just taken another step toward adulthood.

An unrestrained knock came to the classroom door.

When all of the bored students looked over, the door opened and our nervous homeroom teacher poked her head in.

“U-u-um.. Is Jinnai-kun in here? Could I have him come with me for a moment?”

Tarou and the Love King were the first to react.

“Jinnai.. Has your love life finally gotten to the point that even our teacher is calling you out?”

“I’ve heard he’s been visiting the upperclassmen’s third floor zone lately.”

“Shut up! That rumor about the student council room being used for supplementary lessons in love is a complete lie! That scary student council president is just forcing odd jobs onto me, dammit!!”

As we argued, I did as our homeroom teacher said. But this was indeed odd. I couldn’t imagine why she would be calling me out. My best guess was it had to do with Madoka or Nagisa rather than me directly.

As soon as I stepped out into the hall, our homeroom teacher held up the tablet computer she used to keep roll. She used it as shield so we could speak in private. This naturally meant she moved her face in close.

“U-um, this is a first for me, so I’m, uh, not really sure how to handle it..”

“Smooooch.”

“Why are you trying to kiss me all of a sudden, Jinnai-kun!?”

Tch. I tried to disguise it, but she’s surprisingly clever. I was so close, but I was missing something. I need to research this some more.

“So what exactly do you want to talk about? If it’s about the destroyed elementary school during that Oomukade business, I thought I already explained how that was a misunderstanding.”

“W-well, we’ll discuss this more in the student guidance room, but can you look at this first to get you up to speed?”

I didn’t like the sound of discussing something in the student guidance room, but she didn’t seem all that angry. Wondering what this could possibly be, I watched on as she held out her tablet.

It was displaying a news program a TV station was transmitting as streaming video.

“I repeat, the suspect is on the run with a fourteen-year-old girl who goes by the name PSI_ver_RAIN and who is the suspect in another murder case. His name is Uchimaku Hayabusa and he is a detective with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Division 1. He is carrying a handgun and he has killed at least one person at Private Keijou Ijuku University. He is considered extremely dangerous. If any nearby residents happen to see him, do not approach him for any reason.”

“You’re kidding..”

“U-um, it seems to be real. I doubt there will be an immediate panic thanks to the name difference between Jinnai and Uchimaku, but the students are bound to find out before long. So if you want to leave school early, I’ll help you out and secretly-..”

“You’re kidding!? My uncle’s going on a survival date in the big city with Rain-chan!? C’mon, give me a turn! Can he just do whatever he wants!?”

“That’s what you’re interested in!?”

Well, what else would I be interested in? That uncle was the kind of incarnation of justice you only saw in dramas. He wouldn’t kill someone without a good reason.

And it was even more obvious when he was on the run with Rain-chan who was the suspect in another murder case.

Part 10 (Hishigami Enbi)

You might not guess it, but I was part of the so-called Hills Tribe.

And so there I was stepping inside a room in a high-rise Roppongi apartment. I switched on the desktop computer and pulled out a headset for an internet phone. I quickly secured a line with my information source.

But that information source was not just a single expert.

There were plenty of people who heard all sorts of daily conversations as background noise: people handing out fliers, taxi drivers, waitresses, etc. And sometimes those people wanted to work for the good of the world but didn’t know how.

So I connected them together and gave them a place to speak together.

Each individual one was an extremely small online community that gathered people from a similar genre. But when I aggregated and managed the data there, it became a massive monitoring system for all sorts of data. This was how I had so much police and hospital information. I had plenty of helpers such as vending machine workers or cleaning ladies.

“Phew..”

I couldn’t get my brain up and running without my usual smartphone with me. It was really convenient for taking handwritten memos and organizing information. Feeling empty-handed, I started squeezing the face of my Suneky scarf.

At any rate, I mentally went over what I wanted to ask about.

Next, I had to determine the most effective person to ask those questions.

Part 11 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

I had removed PSI_ver_RAIN aka Amagoi Haruka’s handcuffs and we walked through the city. A look at the TVs in an electronics store show window was enough for me to be feeling quite blue.

Wow, I really look like a villain there!!

Of course, I wasn’t a super policeman running through the city to clear the nonsensical charges disgracing his name. I had in fact killed the person they were accusing me of killing.

“Sh-should we really be wandering around the city like this? We live in a world where one hundred million people have cellphones. And if you have a camera, you can transmit the footage right away. So..”

“There are more people on the streets than normal due to the train signal trouble and related traffic jams. We can hide behind the wall of people. And the police are busy managing traffic, so they don’t have the manpower needed for human wave tactics.”

“Y-you mean if someone started looting, the police wouldn’t be able to chase after them?”

“That’s a secret. It would cause a panic if that got out.”

Her distinctive sailor uniform and paint tattoo below the eye weren’t that rare a sight near a university during cultural festival season. And the best way of getting past police checkpoints was to move on foot. Or rather, Japan’s police checkpoints were primarily meant to block off the roads. As long as we didn’t approach any major transportation facilities like train stations or airports, we wouldn’t be caught if we walked around without doing anything too suspicious.

“For now, let’s get to the Metropolitan Police Department. We’re in Minato, so Sakuradamon isn’t far. It should only take ten minutes even on foot.”

“W-wait! But isn’t that right next to the Imperial Palace and the Diet? Aren’t we trying to run away from the police!?”

“Real police officers aren’t a problem. And ‘they’ won’t want to get close to anywhere with strict security. We can assume that the greater the security, the more allies we have around. Isn’t that right?”

Of course, that was only if PSI_ver_RAIN really hadn’t chopped Professor Matsukai in two.

“To make sure there are no misunderstandings, let me make it clear I’m not completely on your side. I’m protecting you because you were in danger, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t a suspect.”

“..Sigh.”

The psychic middle school girl let out a heavy sigh.

Then she removed her mobile glasses.

“I get the feeling we’re going to be together for a while, so it might be a good idea to share what information I have.”

“What’s this?”

“These are mobile glasses. Basically, they’re a smartphone shaped like glasses. They can access the internet, make calls, and record both audio and video. ..Seeing things from my viewpoint would be faster than having me explain it.”

“You mean you recorded when you found the body!?”

I quickly grabbed the mobile glasses and put them on. I wasn’t used to them, so I followed PSI_ver_RAIN’s instructions to start playing the video.

At first, it was footage of her walking through a university staircase.

Unlike a normal camera, it wobbled a lot from the movements of her head and eyes, so I had to focus my mind to avoid motion sickness.

“I mentioned the professor’s belt earlier, remember?” she asked from the side.

The footage moved from the stairs to the hallway. It approached one of the doors and a hand knocked, but the hand suddenly stopped. She must have expected a solid sensation, but the door creaked open instead.

“That belt – well, actually the buckle – was a strange type of USB memory. He didn’t trust the defenses of online or cloud storage, so he liked to keep the data on him in a way that couldn’t be pickpocketed or snatched away by a thief.”

The past footage of the girl called “professor” through the cracked door.

Finding this odd, she placed a hand on the door and slowly opened it. Inside, she found the elderly man lying on his back. His right side was dyed in red, but it looked more like a stab wound than a bisection.

..No, wait. Does this mean..?

“When you found him, the door wasn’t locked. And the body still wasn’t chopped in two?”

“There’s more. Pause it and rewind. Look more carefully at the body this time.”

“..?”

I did so and realized what she was getting at.

Several wounds were cut into him below his navel and just to the left of his belt buckle.

“To prevent theft, the belt buckle wouldn’t open without a code. It was like a chastity belt or something. But thanks to that, the murderer panicked. They wanted to get the buckle’s USB memory no matter what, so they initially tried to cut the belt itself, but..”

“They couldn’t do it with the blade they had on hand?”

“The professor bragged about that belt. It was made of carbon something-or-other which apparently makes it harder than diamond but still flexible.”

The footage on the screen, rushed into the room, crouched down by the professor, and called out to him again and again. She didn’t grab his shoulders and shake him, but she may have been afraid of making him bleed any further.

Finally, the footage turned around as if she had noticed something.

“But the murderer didn’t give up. They wanted to get the buckle no matter what. If they couldn’t cut the belt, what else could they cut through? And what would they need to do so? If they had only left to find that, they were sure to return. And with an even more brutal tool. So what would have happened to me if they ran across me?”

That was the truth of the bisected corpse.

Someone had cut through the torso to steal the belt filled with research data.

“So that’s why you fled..”

“But the guilt won out in the end. I turned back toward the lab to help with the investigation, but then all the policemen and students were talking about a bisected corpse, a psychic murder, and that I supposedly did it. I had no idea what to think.”

I removed the mobile glasses.

PSI_ver_RAIN quietly bit her lip.

“It started as a way to get my name out there. And it probably was for him too. We both wanted to make an impact.”

Those mobile glasses held the final moment of someone who was gone and she held them to her chest like a funeral portrait.

“But he wasn’t a bad person. He was certainly eccentric, but no matter how ridiculous a thing it was, he wouldn’t laugh and drive you out. He would seriously investigate it all. He would actually work with you..”

“That’s an important piece of evidence. We need to get it to the police as soon as possible.”

“Who’s going to believe it? Digital data is easily modified and I’m known for working on the internet anyway. It’s all over if they call it fake.”

I had no response for that.

I tried to say something, but I couldn’t find any words and then I heard a phone ringing.

It was the smartphone the Mystery Freak had given me.

“What is it?”

“I have some good news and some bad news. I’ll start with the good news. Detective, what’s the first place you would want to investigate concerning all this?”

With Professor Matsukai, the fake police officers, and PSI_ver_RAIN herself, there were a lot of candidates, but my mind turned to the most unusual one which was not covered in police officers.

“The prosecutors and the courthouse. For one, how did the thesis on psychic murders get submitted as having scientific basis?”

“Bingo. I thought the same thing and looked into it. That thesis was forced through by the assigned prosecutor, Uzuki Minato. ..But doesn’t that seem odd?”

“The suspect hasn’t even been arrested or indicted, but there’s already a prosecutor?”

“They were setting this up to frame Rain-chan in advance. I tried calling up the prosecution office to tell them there was some falsified data in that thesis and its credibility would drop like a rock if that got out. That would ruin their plans and their partner would probably punish them for it, so I was going to ask for some money to keep quiet.”

Hold on. Should you really be telling me that?

The Mystery Freak ignored my thoughts and continued.

“But that gets to the bad news. Uzuki Minato hasn’t returned to the office since leaving for lunch. He didn’t have any plans for working out of the office and his phone is off. I couldn’t catch him.”

“When was the thesis in question submitted?”

“1:30 PM. That’s right after the murder. It’s possible he vanished as soon as the submission was accepted at the courthouse.”

Once his role was complete, had they eliminated him or were at least trying to?

“Did you call his home?”

“I did. No response.”

“I’ll head there. Tell me where it is.”

I hung up and PSI_ver_RAIN looked puzzled.

“Head there? Head where? Why!? Aren’t we on the way to the Metropolitan Police Department to protect me from whoever killed the professor!?”

“Sorry. All I can do is apologize.”

I obediently bowed my head,

That seemed to catch her off guard, but I didn’t have time to worry about it.

“But Uzuki Minato, a prosecutor who seems to be involved in this, is in danger just like you. I can’t put one life above another. I can’t call in backup like normal, so I have to head there on my own. I know this is selfish, but will you go with me?”

“..”

She averted her gaze, toyed with her hair, and finally gave a long sigh of resignation.

“Fine! Then let’s go. But this ends with checking to see whether this Uzuki person is alive or dead. You need to get me to the Metropolitan Police Department as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

“This isn’t worth thanking me for. The situation is just making it really difficult to do what should be normal.”

With a change of plans, we started toward Uzuki Minato’s home.

If he was there, that was fine. If not, we might find a clue to where he was hiding.

Part 12 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

Uzuki Minato’s home was located on reclaimed land bordering the bay. The area had originally been planned as a district of high-class apartment buildings, but the plan was halted when soil liquefaction was discovered. From there, it transformed into an incredibly cheap area of land in the city center due to unfortunate circumstances.

I rang the doorbell but received no response.

I slipped through the small gate and grabbed the knob, discovering the door was not locked.

“..”

PSI_ver_RAIN and I exchanged a glance and I slowly opened the door. I wasn’t sure what to do inside, but I decided to remove my shoes and continue on in. It took some doing for PSI_ver_RAIN to remove her boots and she even politely removed her hat, but she kept the mobile glasses on.

I walked down the hallway, opened the first door, and found a living room.

A young man was collapsed face-up in the center of the room.

“Uzuki-san!? Dammit!!”

I ran over and grabbed his shoulders, but he was just an object now. Shifting his position allowed blood to pool up by his side.

Were “they” faster!?

And..

“Kyah!?”

This time, PSI_ver_RAIN cried out behind me.

My mind turned to my handgun as I turned around, but I only found the girl there and she was messing with her mobile glasses for some reason.

“What is it?”

“Eh? Um, uh, my mobile glasses are acting up for some reason.”

We had discovered a corpse and our electronics weren’t working. It sounded like a scene from a horror movie.

As that thought reached me, the door to the dining room casually opened.

A young woman in a tank top and hot pants poked her head out with a sake bottle in one hand.

“Hishigami..Mai!?”

“Okay, okay. I used remote control to take over those glasses of yours. For people like us, nothing could be more troublesome than those things. To be honest, going around recording everything is like asking to be killed.”

Mai seemed perfectly carefree despite the corpse in the room.

“And if you’re going to come in here, couldn’t you at least wear gloves? Well, I was about to erase the evidence with some alcohol, so I’ll help you out if you tell me what you touched. Was it only the corpse and the doorknob? Anything else?”

“Erase..the evidence? Are you saying you did this!?”

“Don’t insult me. I was going to clean up the floor because the Sunekosuri pissed himself quite spectacularly when he saw the corpse. He’s out in the yard doing some soul-searching, so you can go say hi if you want.”

What was this woman doing in the PSI_ver_RAIN incident?

When she was involved, it went beyond simple crimes and nearly reached the level of a war.

“You aren’t wrong to think that way.”

Mai seemed to have read my mind.

“I’m not the one getting involved where I don’t belong. You’re the ones doing that. ..So how much do you know about this incident? Do you know what was on the belt buckle’s USB memory? Do you know who’s after it? In fact, do you even know who Professor Matsukai Hiroshi was?”

“What? What do you mean who he was?”

Mai was always several steps ahead of us, but that final question seemed different to me. We had never even thought about it like that.

“Wait, really? It didn’t come back to you the second you heard the fake name Matsukai Hiroshi? When we were caught in the Hyakki Yakou coup d’etat in that red brick hotel up north, every member of Saishi Kajin used that name. It’s the fake name used by the people who slaughtered the hotel’s workers and took their place.”

“Wait. You don’t mean..”

“Oh, it isn’t Saishi Kajin themselves. That’s a free fake name that anyone can use. But there’s definitely an organization on an equal level involved in this. That means this was in my territory from the beginning. Understand now?”

This was no laughing matter and I couldn’t understand any of it.

If this really was part of Mai’s world, then how did we get involved? What landmine had we unwittingly stepped on?

“That professor was a member of a certain team.”

“A team?”

“The one the Aoandon is gathering. And the buckle contained the program used to activate a Package including the Aoandon herself.”

Professor Matsukai’s original field of study was information engineering. The psychic powers research was supposedly only a performance meant to get him on TV, make a name for himself, and get funding.

“So someone stole that from him?”

“Now you’re getting it. And of course, it wouldn’t have been someone with the Aoandon. This is probably a close competition between the Aoandon’s group and another group trying to crush it.”

For the group stealing the professor’s buckle, the torso bisection had been a deviation from the plan.

Simply stabbing him and swiping the buckle could be passed off as a random industrial spy, but their method had been far too grotesque. It was impossible to ignore now, so they were making it look like a sensational psychic murder as if covering food with mayonnaise to hide the original flavor.

So who was it we were after here?

Who was this enemy of the Aoandon?

“Who are ‘they’? How can I clear PSI_ver_RAIN..no, Amagoi-san’s name!?”

“At least you have enough sense not to try to take on the Aoandon at the base of all this. Of course, that’s my job. They’re known as Konrin Naraku. They’re one of the lowest level organizations out there. Or rather, they intentionally gather a ton of low-level firepower. If you think of Hyakki Yakou as a top-class restaurant, then Konrin Naraku is the king of fast food.”

“..?”

“Basically, they’re all expendable. They recruit people dealing with debt, abuse, a stalker, trouble with a large criminal organization, or some other problem. Then they take care of that problem for the person in exchange for doing a job that will land them in jail. They’re not expecting to return safely and getting arrested is a part of their plan from the beginning. Then again, I hear some of them are asked to give their lives in exchange for saving their families.”

It all started to make sense.

When I had revealed Katou and Arisaka as fake policemen, one had shot the other and then made a hopeless threat that got him shot by me.

He hadn’t been trying to win. He may have been using the Mystery Freak as a way to commit suicide.

“But Konrin Naraku is an entirely mercenary group, so they wouldn’t go and kill someone for their own principles. That means someone else has hired them to stop the Aoandon’s group and they’re using you as a part of that plan.”

“Who is that?”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t asked, officer.”

“Either way, I’ve already made an enemy of whoever it is. There’s no two ways around it in this situation, so tell me. Who in the world is it!?”

Mai slowly exhaled and then spoke.

“What do you think the Aoandon is after anyway?”

“Stop beating around the bu-..”

“The answer is Nagatacho.”

That word seemed to squeeze at my heart.

My mouth flapped opened and closed without a word escaping, so Mai continued.

“More accurately, Nagatacho Station. You’ve heard the rumors, right? Supposedly, there’s a largescale nuclear shelter for the Diet members and bureaucrats hidden below that subway station since it’s so close to the Diet building. Even if their diplomatic strategy fails and nuclear war begins, the very ones who started it can live on in peace without taking any kind of responsibility.”

“..”

“But do you really think it’s just a nuclear shelter hidden there? The younger Diet members seem to believe that, but it isn’t true. That isn’t some puny little facility meant to protect the easily replaceable Diet members that pretty much just won a popularity contest.”

In other words, our enemy was..

“It’s someone who doesn’t want the Aoandon to open that door,” said Mai. “It’s one of the few VIPs who know the truth about Nagatacho Station that not even the cabinet ministers know about. That’s the target you need to bring down.”

Part 13 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

I felt my vision shaking.

The Diet? The cabinet ministers? Someone even higher? One of the few VIPs who know the truth about Nagatacho Station?

The more she described our enemy, the less clear a picture I had of them. That was how deep they were. It was like chasing after a monster from an urban legend.

Was there really anything we could do?

But even as a mixture of doubt and fear came over me, time was passing.

This time, the Mystery Freak’s smartphone rang.

“I’m relaying a call, detective. I answered because someone called your number, but I can transfer them to you if you want. Should I?”

“Who is it?”

“Mishima Ju-->>

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