The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency

by Kafka Asagiri

  Fukuzawa began to get impatient.

  What happened during the short amount of time he took his eyes off Ranpo? It didn’t matter that the kid was a quick-thinking genius. Even if he had already found out who was behind this and was trying to lure them out, he wouldn’t stand a chance if they attacked him. He was still just a boy, and the darkness of this lawless city was rampant with violence. Some wouldn’t even hesitate to kill a child like Ranpo.

  “I’ll go look for them.” Fukuzawa quickly retired from the conference room.

  Something had to have happened to Ranpo while he was heading to the station. Fukuzawa racked his brain, briskly walking forward. Did Ranpo have a plan? But he had no idea how corrupt this city was. Ranpo thought he knew everything, but he wasn’t a skill user. There was no way for him to know something unless he saw it with his own eyes.

  And the one who made Ranpo believe he was a skill user was none other than Fukuzawa himself. He strode through the lobby until he reached the front entrance. Most of the patrons had left, and the area was now quiet. The moment he walked outside, he caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye where Ranpo had gotten into the police car. When he strained his eyes, he saw something white by the building’s wall and decided to check it out. It was a white business card. A rock was lying on top, perhaps to keep it from being blown away by the wind. When Fukuzawa got close enough, he immediately recognized that it was his business card.

  It can’t be—

  He picked it up, and sure enough, it did have his name and contact information on it. He couldn’t discern who he originally gave it to, though. Fukuzawa flipped the card over. Messily written on the back in pencil was:

  Mitamura is the real culprit. Search for the cane.

  “No way. Come on.” Mitamura shook his head while smiling as he drove. “I can’t believe such an extraordinary skill user slipped under our radar.”

  Ranpo didn’t respond. He simply stared at Mitamura through the rearview mirror with his young, piercing gaze behind the glasses.

  “I guess it would be impolite to make excuses or deny it in the face of such a master detective. Now that you’ve found me out, I should probably do the right thing and tell you the truth and my motives,” Mitamura continued with a smile. “Just wait a little bit longer, please. There’s a more fitting place up ahead for me to welcome you, Master Detective.”

  “All right, but make it quick,” Ranpo demanded with indifference. “It’s already late, so I’m getting tired.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  The police car drove through the city night until it reached a seemingly empty commercial district. Driving down a road with no streetlights, they soon reach a brand-new four-story building and park.

  “We’re here. Officially, this building’s an office for a ‘shipbuilding company’ if you know what I mean,” Mitamura joked while looking up at the building. “In reality, we own it. It’s what they call a shell company. Now, come. Please watch your step.”

  Ranpo got out of the car as requested, and they walked through the empty building’s front door. At a glance, it looked just like any other building in the city. However, there were no lights on inside, nor were there any guards. As Mitamura and Ranpo continued to walk, all that illuminated the dusk was the greenish hue of the emergency lights.

  “This way, please.”

  Mitamura opened a glass door. The room was empty, but one of the walls was completely made from glass, giving a clear view of Yokohama’s skyline in the distance. Ranpo started entering the room as requested before speaking up.

  “A gun?”

  “Hmm?”

  “That thing. The gun.”

  Ranpo pointed at Mitamura’s waist. Hanging there was a city police–issued black revolver.

  “I’ve never wanted to die before, but I don’t want it to hurt when I do. I’ve thought about it, though. The moment the bullet pierces your head probably hurts. But I’ve never talked to a dead guy before, so I can’t say for sure.”

  “Ha-ha. I’m not going to shoot you with this.” Mitamura smiled while touching his gun. Then his eyes narrowed. “…As long as you do as I say.”

  Fukuzawa quickly passed through the empty theater’s hallway to the auditorium. Everyone had already gone home, and only Fukuzawa’s footsteps eerily echoed. His expression was intense, but there was no hesitation in his gaze. There was only one thing that came to mind when he saw the word cane. He casually climbed up onto the stage, stepped over the faint stain of blood, and headed toward the back.

  Fukuzawa immediately found the cane. Underneath the white fabric screen that Ranpo tore down was a T-shaped cane casually lying on the ground. It was somewhat old, but the grip had gold foil decorations embedded in it, suggesting high-end quality. The polished body seemed to be made from a camellia tree. It was the cane that the suited gentleman had been using.

  Fukuzawa hadn’t heard where the owner of the cane was currently. Some said he was taken to the hospital, while others said he ran away to avoid any complicated matters that may have followed. If he ran away, then there would be no way of finding him now. The cane was what was important at the moment. Fukuzawa immediately noticed something was off when he held it: The center of gravity was somewhat high. Such a small oddity would be noticed only by someone who had held countless wooden swords and real swords, such as Fukuzawa. He carefully checked the handle and noticed a pronounced gap among the decorative gold. Something about as thick as a sheet of paper could be slid into the crack.

  He first thought it was a sword cane, a typical weapon for an assassin. It was deadly, as well as something Fukuzawa used on rare occasions, so he was very familiar with them.

  But this was different. There wasn’t enough space to hide a blade. Then what could it have been used for?

  He held down the hidden notch while twisting the handle until the decorations indeed came off, revealing the inside.

  “…?”

  It was empty. No weapon, no drugs—there was nothing there. It was just a hollowed-out piece of wood.

  Why would Ranpo ask me to find this?

  Fukuzawa looked into the cavity. It was surprisingly deep. Using what little light he had, he measured the depth. A document could fit inside if it were rolled up first.

  —A currently empty crevice.

  —A document.

  I see.

  Fukuzawa figured it out: Whatever was inside had already been taken. It was only reasonable to come to such a conclusion. There was probably something inside it when the suited gentleman was carrying it. Was he bringing it somewhere? Or was he simply trying to keep it close by? He was knocked unconscious, and whatever was in there—perhaps a document of some sort considering the size—was stolen. Then the cane was tossed away after serving its purpose.

  The mystery of the suited gentleman, the mystery of the empty cane, and the mystery of the real culprit who had stolen what was inside—there were many questions stemming from this single cane. But it gave no clues to what Fukuzawa needed to know the most: Where was Ranpo?

  So Ranpo didn’t leave that message to tell Fukuzawa where he was. And the message was clearly from Ranpo; nobody else would have left a note accusing someone of being the true culprit. Was there something else to this cane?

  Fukuzawa pondered. Ranpo didn’t have time to touch or check the cane. Even then, he knew there was more to it, which is why he told Fukuzawa to find it. While Ranpo may have had unattainable heights of insight, he figured something out about the cane without even touching it. Failing to find out what that was even after examining it was starting to make Fukuzawa feel as if he had failed as an adult.

  The only thing that caught Fukuzawa’s attention was how relatively easy it felt getting to the hidden cavity. This would be fine for sword canes that needed to be unsheathed at the drop of a hat, but it had to be a lot harder to open for something that was solely made to hide a document.

  Fukuzawa discovered the cavity almost instantly. Th
e person who stole whatever was inside probably found out how to open it quickly as well. Perhaps it was a slight oversight.

  But from Fukuzawa’s point of view, this carelessness didn’t match with the impression he had. The gentleman was big game. The culprit had to set up this entire scheme to catch him, since he was so cautious that he had tried to escape the theater the moment he detected something was wrong.

  Which meant there was only one other possibility.

  Fukuzawa observed the cavity once more. It was perfectly curved without a scratch. He touched it with a finger. To his senses, the polished wood felt almost like a perfect circle. He put his finger in the hole and held the inside while firmly pulling the cane. After a few moments, he felt the inside slightly move. He pulled some more. Thereupon, the inside of the cane popped right out. It was what they call a false bottom, a gimmick to trick thieves into stealing whatever unimportant thing was stuffed in the first cavity. In other words, the real hiding place was in the back side of the interior cylinder.

  Fukuzawa gazed into the cylinder he pulled out and instinctively knitted his brows. The back side was an electronic memory device. There was nothing else suspicious about it. Bonded onto the surface of the cylinder was a curved circuit board. Even Fukuzawa almost immediately knew what he was looking at: an ultrathin memory terminal. The hidden cavity was a red herring. While it was a false-bottom cane, the walls of the cylinder itself were the real carriers of information. Fukuzawa had heard rumors of an organization who transported information like this.

  “Then that means…,” Fukuzawa grunted.

  That suited gentleman was a skill user, and he was hiding from a criminal syndicate after him. Now there was finally enough information to reason who the real culprit was.

  Fukuzawa began to walk without even a second of hesitation. He could finally see, albeit dimly, the whale that Ranpo was trying to catch.

  “So where are we?” Ranpo indifferently asked as he stared out the window.

  “One of our more convenient bases. As you can see, we can do whatever we want at night without being seen or heard here. It’s the perfect place to do anything, whether it be hiding, having a secret meeting, or—”

  “Torturing someone?” Ranpo blurted out, causing Officer Jun Mitamura to raise his eyebrows in a theatrical show of surprise.

  “Oh my. I thought I made myself clear earlier. I brought you here simply so we could welcome the great detective into our home. The thought of torture didn’t even cross my mind. This is all one big misunderstanding.”

  “Those are a lot of armed guards for a misunderstanding. There were four—no, five of them, weren’t there?” claimed Ranpo with a nonchalant shrug. Mitamura fell silent, seemingly caught by surprise. The guards were perfectly hidden. They were all hired from the outside—foreign ex-military—and they had been trained to be able to observe their target without leaving a single trace. They had been watching from a blind spot, not once ever leaving a footprint or clearing their throat.

  “Wow… You never cease to impress me.” Mitamura scratched his head in a troubled manner. “How did you know?”

  “I told you already. That’s my skill,” said Ranpo as he put on his glasses.

  “Hmm…” After thinking for a moment, Mitamura spread out his arms as if to show he meant no harm. “Well done. But I want to make sure this is clear so that there are no misunderstandings. Those men have absolutely no interest in harming you. They were originally brought here to stand guard and keep an eye on the target—the man in the suit who you revealed onstage to the entire audience. So, essentially, they are just working overtime right now. After all, who knows what kind of lawless thug might come after the world’s greatest detective?”

  “Lawless thug, huh…? Wish I knew who you were referring to. Anyway, why’d you bring me here?” asked Ranpo as he took a seat in the nearby chair.

  “We have ourselves a little situation. As you well know, we had a rather elaborate plan in motion at the theater, so the higher-ups are pretty pissed off. They told me to catch the guy who messed everything up. Wanted me to make you talk. Figure out how you knew the truth. Figure out where you got that leaked information. Rather shortsighted if you ask me. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the confidential document I found in that man’s cane. Good grief. It was a fake. Can you believe it?” Mitamura shrugged melodramatically. “Of course, it’s a big deal if someone leaked our plan to an outside source. It’s a matter of internal discipline, after all. But you and me, Great Detective, know that’s not the case. It was all thanks to your supernatural ability. That’s why it doesn’t matter how hard I squeeze you to get an information source out of you. It doesn’t exist, right?”

  “…”

  Mitamura glanced at Ranpo’s silent expression before continuing.

  “But you know how it is with honor and dignity and all that. I can’t let you go that easily, so I’m having a little dilemma here. As things are now, the boss is going to make us hurt you even though we don’t want to, and you wouldn’t want that, right? I know I wouldn’t. So here’s my offer…”

  Mitamura took a step forward in the dim room. His shadow grew lengthwise in the light coming through the window from the night outside. He sat before Ranpo, who was closing his eyes, then whispered:

  “…How about joining us?”

  An uncomfortable silence reigned over the room.

  “We are men with ambition. Our only wish is to cleanse this country of evil, and we would love to have a talented skill user such as yourself. What do you say?”

  The backlight obscured Mitamura’s face in the darkness, but one could easily imagine his cold, thin smile from the abyss.

  “…Hmm?” Ranpo, sitting down, lifted his head up and looked in the direction of the gaze. “Oh, sorry. You just kept going on and on, so I got bored and stopped listening… Could you make it more interesting next time?”

  Mitamura’s face froze. A tense air filled the room.

  Fukuzawa was rushing toward an underground prison. It was a square, one-story building adjacent to the police station. He had already contacted them in advance, so he greeted the guards and headed straight down the long staircase. Unlike a detention cell that temporarily held suspects, the facility was built with the principal aim to keep any criminals from ever leaving. Fukuzawa reached a thick steel double door. There were no windows in the cell, and the walls were reinforced with steel frames. In the back was a boy.

  “You awake?”

  The boy wore a straitjacket and was constrained with multiple chains in the empty concrete room. He slowly looked up. His empty, emotionless eyes were a reddish brown. Fukuzawa looked through the narrow observation window on the door and saw the assassin’s face. It was the hit man from this morning who’d killed the secretary. He quietly stared at Fukuzawa from under his short crimson hair, not so much as a hint of emotion in his eyes.

  “How’s the cell?”

  “Not as bad as some others. The air-conditioning works.”

  Even Fukuzawa, who had faced numerous villains and assassins, had never seen eyes like his. Most skilled hit men looked down on others as if they were insects. Their eyes were cold and lacked compassion. But this boy’s were different. They weren’t cold or any temperature. They were just empty. Not only was there no compassion or kindness, there was no hate or passion to kill. His eyes were those of a person who had given up all hope and despair—the eyes of a person who had removed himself from emotional things.

  This kid’s different from the old me. Perhaps he never felt any joy from killing others. He was probably only killing because he had nothing else to do.

  “I came because there’s something I want to ask you,” Fukuzawa said, facing the observation window. “Have a look at this.”

  Fukuzawa held out the case toward the observation window, showing the cylinder with the memory device.

  “This is a memory device used by a certain national organization. It needs special equipment to be deciphere
d, and stealing the information inside is next to impossible. It’s used by people under the witness protection program so they can remain invisible to the public while exchanging information with the witness protection organization. In other words, key figures targeted by criminal organizations would possess this device. Furthermore, there’s something all these key figures have in common. They’re all skill users.”

  Fukuzawa closely observed the hit man, but the hit man’s gaze didn’t change.

  “Now let’s talk about why I’m here. You are a highly skilled assassin who’s worked for outside organizations as well, I’m sure. So have you received any requests to capture a skill user as of late?”

  The boy didn’t answer.

  “Which is it?”

  “…I can’t reveal my clients,” answered the boy in a hoarse voice.

  “Doesn’t have to be about your clients’ requests.” Fukuzawa tried to bargain. “Have you heard recently about anybody around here searching for someone who could capture a skill user alive? It’s a difficult target, someone who pops up randomly and is currently under the witness protection program. The client would have asked for this man to be found and captured alive in secret. The payment would have been exceptional, and the client would have kept their identity confidential. The client would have probably called themselves ‘Angel’ or ‘V.’”

  The moment the boy heard the name “V,” his shoulders twitched. This assassin knows something, Fukuzawa thought.

  The government, which didn’t officially acknowledge the existence of skill users, was secretly protecting those skill users, and the gentleman in the suit was most likely one of them. They were preeminent figures even in this city, beings sought after by foreign military parties, domestic criminal organizations, and countless enemies. It wasn’t clear why these people were after them, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say they held secrets connected to the foundation of the country.

  A run-of-the-mill group of thugs wouldn’t even be able to find a footprint left by someone of that caliber. Even if they did find them, they wouldn’t be able to break through the witness protection organization’s police line unless they were a top-class assassin. Plus, the organization behind this—the so-called V—refused to dirty their own hands. They would solely use people from the outside.