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“Okay!” Aya said, happily.

  Nagi smiled to herself. It was like they were newlyweds, she thought. Or...or she’s the adorable assistant of a worn-out detective...

  The role she'd never managed to adequately play. Nagi sighed, covered the dead crow with a sheet, and stood up.

  3

  “Nagi, what do you think being normal means?” Kirima Seiichi asked as he died. He was coughing up blood on the floor of his work room, gasping his last breath.

  Nagi had said,

  “I-I'll call a doctor!” and tried to run off, but Seiichi just grabbed her hand and squeezed tightly.

  Then he said,

  “Being normal means abandoning change...staying exactly the same forever. So if you don't want that...then you have to be something that isn't normal. That's why...why I...”

  He was muttering words that made no sense. Nagi had already realized that he could not be saved.

  She also was aware that he knew he was dying, as well.

  Her father had something he could not tell her, but was trying to get something across anyway, which was why he was talking like that-she knew this instinctively.

  But even so, Nagi could not answer Seiichi.

  The ambulance arrived, and he was placed on a stretcher, but by then he was already dead. The cause of death was gastric perforation leading to dissolution of the internal organs. Everything around his stomach had melted.

  People gossiped that he had worked himself to death. It was like he had died in battle, and his death seemed only to increase his popularity.

  Nagi herself received a number of offers from the media. She bore a heavy burden, as she was the daughter of a celebrity and was also very beautiful.

  But Nagi rejected every proposal. Some of them were very persistent, but Sakakibara Gen was able to help get rid of them.

  Nagi occasionally asked Gen about her father's death.

  “Sensei, did my father like his work?”

  “Dunno.”

  Gen was a tall, skinny man with an impish expression. At a glance, you would never guess he was a martial artist. No matter what, his first reaction was to insist he knew nothing. It was hard to tell if he wanted her to think for herself or was just being cautious, but that's the kind of man he was.

  “He always seemed like there was something driving him forward. Looking at it now, it's easy to say it was 'death,' but somehow I just can't quite make myself believe that.”

  He scratched his scraggly beard.

  “Then what was it?”

  “Hmm. I just think he was pissed off I mean, it was like he felt, 'Things ought to be working out okay, so why had the world turned out this way?' After all, he was an enemy of society.”

  That had been Kirima Seiichi's self-selected nickname.

  “Pissed off...that's so simple it actually makes it harder to understand.”

  “Ha ha ha. Seiichi said that to me all the time. 'Gen, everything you say hits the truth with such accuracy it completely misses the point."'

  “But he was friendly with you. He didn't spend all his time being angry.”

  'No, well...he was never much good at meeting people, and would never work particularly hard at getting along with anyone.”

  “...yeah, like Mom?”

  “...mmm, it's complicated,” Gen sighed.

  For a moment they sat in silence. Nagi was the first to break it.

  “Sensei,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Did my father think he knew everything? That he was the smartest person in the world and could understand anything? Did he ever feel like that?”

  “Not sure. Certainly he was smarter than anyone else I've ever met...but he always insisted that I was much smarter than him. 'Course, he might have just been making fun of me. But when he learned something he didn't know, he would always say, 'Fascinating.' He was never embarrassed by a lack of knowledge. And he often said that he was really an idiot, didn't he?”

  “I never knew if he really meant that.”

  “Neither did I.”

  ...even eight years later, Nagi never knew how serious her father had been.

  ***

  It was early in the morning, just after dawn.

  There was no one on the road running along the river. The only sound was the gentle burbling of the river water. There were homes nearby, but everyone was still sleeping. The area was one small gap in the constant bustle of the world.

  They had recently finished repaving the road, and the new asphalt gleamed on the surface. Footsteps were tapping along it.

  They came from a man in a suit and tie. He appeared to be a dedicated worker, a middle-aged government employee. There was a plastic garbage bag in his hand.

  The dark shadow of exhaustion was on his face. He must have been under a lot of stress.

  He sighed loudly, and hefted the garbage bag, staring at it contemplatively.

  “Guess I should hurry,” he said, and tossed it onto the garbage area next to the road. It was still early, and there were only two or three other bags there -- probably put there the night before in defiance of regulations.

  The man turned around, and headed back the way he had come.

  “-----------!”

  He stopped a few seconds later. There was someone in front of him. How long had she been there?

  “...I see. So it was you?”

  The man went stiff. Not only because he'd been addressed directly, but also because this person was majestic, and seemed to be radiating a beautiful light.

  She wore a leather jumpsuit and sturdy steel tipped boots. It was Kirima Nagi.

  The girl people called the Fire Witch.

  “Wh-who are you?”

  “Who I am is not important. The problem lies with you.”

  “Wh-what do you mean?”

  “You're the bad guy, aren't you?” she said, abruptly.

  The man gaped, taking a step backwards.

  Nagi took a step forward.

  “I understand two things,” Nagi explained.

  “First, that you were acting alone. This was not carried out by any group. Those clothes -- that suit -- is a fraud. Even if someone sees you, they'll just think you're a salaryman who's been asked to take out the trash. It keeps you from attracting suspicion. If you had help, you'd never need to do that -- you could all coordinate your tasks together. This case had that air about it from the beginning, but now I'm sure of it.”

  The man flinched. She was unrelenting. But he quickly coughed and tried to gain the upper hand.

  “Who do you think you are? You look like you're still in high school! What are you blabbering on about, anyway? What case? What do you mean? I have no idea what this is about.”

  He seemed sure that children would be cowed if he just acted arrogant enough.

  “What school do you go to? Depending on what you think you're doing, I may have to report this to your teachers!”

  Certainly, the average high school student would get flustered if an adult suddenly scolded them. But Nagi was no ordinary girl.

  She carried on as if he'd never spoken.

  “Second, you are acting calmly, in full knowledge of the possible consequences. That's why the hand that darted into your pocket when I called out to you swiftly came out empty. If you used the gun you're carrying you would not be able to talk your way out of this.”

  She pointed at the bulge in his pocket.

  “............ !” The man went pale.

  “But judging from the size of that gun, it won't be very accurate. And the tension I'm sensing from you does not suggest you've used it a lot. At this distance you'll never hit me.”

  Nagi had been carefully maintaining the distance between them.

  The man groaned, but tried again,

  “S-so what are you saying? What 'case' are you talking about?!”

  “The dead crows,” Nagi said, bluntly.

  “Wh-what do those have to do...”

  “The crows that died attacking ea
ch other.”

  The air shifted. The awkwardness vanished, replaced with a murderous tension.

  “…………”

  The man was no longer putting on his act. His hand went into his pocket, and he pulled out the gun and pointed it at Nagi.

  But he did not pull the trigger -- he only held it steady. He asked,

  “How much do you know?”

  “I'm absolutely sure you've been planting drugs disguised as garbage for the crows to eat. Everything beyond that is only supposition.”

  The gun did not waver, his eyebrows did not flicker.

  “Tell me,” the man hissed.

  “I first thought something was strange when I noticed beak marks on the crows' bodies. The only explanation I could come up with is that they were attacking each other. Groups of crows have some unusual habits, one of which is to execute one of their members that has grown ill and begun exhibiting unusual behavior. But they would never do that where other animals would come to feed. They normally carry out such behavior somewhere safer, in seclusion from observers. But the dead crows had beak and claw marks on their bodies, and bits of what appeared to be crow flesh inside their own beaks. Which means, I surmised, they went unexpectedly berserk and attacked the other crows, which subsequently fought back. Why did that happen? You know better than I do.”

  “…………”

  “In my autopsy, I found traces of a food additive that had an element that can only be described as a stimulant. But it was only a small amount, so something must have strengthened it...”

  “Exactly!” the man yelled.

  “I am not scattering poison! The poison was already in the garbage!”

  “And you drove the crows and rats in town to crazed violence to let people know that?” Nagi asked quietly.

  The man glared at her.

  Yes -- that's what this case boiled down to. This oddly calculated plan had been lurking behind what appeared to be simply a dead crow in a garbage area.

  “I did! How many crows and rats are there in the city? Millions! If they all turn violent at once, attacking people, everyone will assume it must be something in the food!”

  The man shook, his voice tight with emotion.

  “And when it turns out people are eating the same thing...”

  There was grief in his eyes. Nagi knew what that grief meant. Those were the eyes of someone who had suffered a great loss.

  “...childhood allergies?”

  This man had most likely lost a child.

  “...and nobody knows! That's why I had to make them understand! That's why...”

  “In that case, you're finished,” Nagi interrupted.

  “Mm?” The man blinked at her.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I noticed. You were doing this because nobody knew. But now that I've noticed the truth behind your actions, there's no need for you to continue.”

  She looked him right in the eye.

  “…………”

  The man was stunned.

  She walked slowly toward him.

  He watched her, dazed. He only recovered and tried to shake her off when she put her hand on the gun. A moment later his body was airborne, and he landed hard on his back.

  Nagi's hand had twisted ever so slightly, but with enough force to send a grown man flying. It wasn't karate -- this was an Aikido move.

  “Hmm,” she looked down at the gun, swiftly ejected the bullets, and then dropped it on the ground next to the man.

  He'd hit his spine and could not stand up.

  “Unh...!” he groaned, tears flowing down his cheeks.

  Nagi addressed him coldly,

  “Think about it. If all the crows go berserk, they will attack the weak. Those in the greatest danger will be babies. Is that what you want?”

  “Aauuuughh!” the man wailed, sobbing in earnest. All the tension had left him.

  “I just.. .I just...”

  Ignoring him, she went over to the garbage bag and cut it open with a knife. It was filled with thinly sliced meat, with bits of paper and something white scattered over it. The

  “feed.”

  Nagi gathered that up and stuffed it in her bag, then closed the garbage bag again and put it back on the pile.

  “So,” she said, turning to leave.

  “W-wait!” the man called out. He was on his feet-unsteady, but upright.

  “Why don't you arrest me?”

  “You have not committed any crimes. No point in taking you to the police. The feed itself is probably not poisonous. Throwing it out in the garbage is not a crime unless I can prove cause and effect.”

  “B-but... !”

  “Yeah. You're right. There is one person who thinks this is a crime. You. Even though you must have been the first to realize that crimes required proof.”

  “............ !”

  “If you still have the resolve to tell the world, then do so. You are the only one who can.” She turned her back on him again.

  The man hung his head, but a moment later looked up, and asked,

  “What is your name?”

  Nagi did not tum around.

  “Unlike some people, I do not like giving out my name,” she said, and walked away.

  4

  “So, what was it all about?” Kentaro asked when Nagi came back to the bike where she'd left him waiting.

  “I basically get that this was all revenge for a baby that died when that guy fed it something with that additive in it, but why didn't he just take it to court in the first place?”

  “He was probably too sad.”

  “Huh?”

  “He most likely didn't think about anything for a year. Only afterward did he start to suspect that the additive might have been the cause of the tragedy. But after that much time had passed, it would be pretty hard to get anyone to listen to him. He was too late. And the manufacturer has really good lawyers.”

  “I see. So that's why he tried this...but should we really just let him go? Won't he go public with what he did?”

  “He might.”

  “And he might tell everyone about you.”

  “I'm not so sure. I've decided I'm just going to take that risk,” Nagi said, not sounding the least bit worried.

  Kentaro stared at her for a moment, but eventually he sighed.

  “But if he goes public there will be all kinds of panic. Like all the fuss over Teratsuki Kyoichiro, or...or those serial killings five years ago, where that Sasaki Masanori guy almost killed Suema-san.”

  Nagi grimaced. When he saw that, Kentaro sighed again.

  The Sasaki Masanori incident had involved an ordinary food manufacturing company salaryman named Sasaki Masanori, who turned out to be a serial killer who had brutally murdered several young girls. Nagi's friend Suema Kazuko, who Kentaro had met several times now, had been on the killer's list and narrowly avoided becoming a victim.

  According to the police reports, Sasaki Masanori had been found hanging from a rope; a suicide.

  But from what Suema had told him, the case had actually been solved in secret by Nagi herself, when she was only fourteen.

  But whenever the subject came up, Nagi became obviously annoyed and refused to talk about it.

  Kentaro felt hurt by this, frustrated that Nagi wouldn't open up to him, wouldn't trust him.

  “Maybe you'd be better off if he did tell everyone. I mean, Nagi, you don't get any thanks for what you do.”

  Nagi grinned at him.

  “And who was it who snuck out the back door after wrapping up the Teratsuki Kyoichiro affair?”

  She put her helmet on, threw her leg over her motorcycle, and started the engine.

  “Yeah, well,” Kentaro said, shrugging.

  “That's your style, isn't it?”

  He was here on an ordinary bicycle. He put his helmet on, too.

  * * *

  They had plenty of time before school started, so they took a leisurely ride down the river. The morning breeze was re
freshing.

  I might just stick to Nagi because I like moments like this... Kentaro grinned, riding alongside Nagi.

  Suddenly, Nagi hit the brakes, stopping her motorcycle.

  Kentaro pulled up as well, almost toppling over, but catching his balance at the last second.

  “Wh-what?! Something wrong?!” Kentaro asked, but Nagi did not answer.

  Her neck was bent, staring up at a building across the road. It was a strangely shaped-an octagonal prism. Pretty big, too.

  “That's...”

  “Yeah, one of the infamous Teratsuki-shi's eccentric buildings. It was a general hospital. Can't recall if it was prefectural or city, though,” Kentaro said, pushing his bike back in her direction.

  “It's. .. still there?” Nagi murmured.

  “Yeah. It closed some time ago, but...all the properties he was involved with have proved really hard to dispose of. It must be slated for demolition soon. The creditors must own it by now.”

  “…………”

  Nagi stared up at it a moment longer, and then abruptly wheeled her motorcycle around and sped off toward the structure.

  Kentaro was baffled by her behavior, but followed her anyway.

  ***

  The building was surrounded by chain link fences, with

  “No Trespassing” signs, but Nagi went right on in, and Kentaro followed, shaking his head.

  “Ew, what a dump...” he said, as he stepped inside.

  The interior was heavily deteriorated. Bed frames were piled high in the lobby, dust balls heaped on them like fluffy stuffed animals. The tiles on the floor were no longer attached, and shifted underfoot. Kentaro felt like he was walking on dead insects.

  “Yuck. Nagi, what the hell are we doing here?”

  Nagi ignored him, walking straight ahead. Judging from her lack of hesitation, she knew this place pretty well.

  Oh! Maybe...

  He'd heard Nagi had been sick in junior high, and spent a long time in the hospital. Maybe this was her hospital.

  Lots of memories, then?

  Nagi stepped out into the open space in the center of the building.

  Kentaro heard her gasp, and poked his head out the door.