05 - 5656! -Knights' Strange Night-

by Ryohgo Narita

  It was clear from their voices and eyes that they were ready to kill.

  Sherlock was anxiously holding Charlotte against himself, but once the men were gone he felt a different sort of anxiety.

  “S-Sorry, Charlotte. Are you all right?” He asked, quickly letting go of her.

  Charlotte didn’t seem at all affected by the embrace. She looked in the direction the men had gone, as enthusiastic as ever.

  “I smell a case!”

  “I do too. So let’s get out of here!”

  “No! If a detective knows a case is going to happen, it is her sworn duty to stop it. A detective shouldn’t be praised for solving a case if she knew beforehand that it would happen!”

  The glint in her eye was already rushing off after the men.

  But Sherlock—though he couldn’t help himself sighing—tried to stop her.

  “Look, Charlotte. I know I’ve been lecturing you about this forever, but…isn’t there anyone you love?”

  “W-where did that come from, Sherlock Liverpool?! I…I did sometimes and didn’t sometimes…” Charlotte stammered, turning red. But Sherlock continued gravely.

  “Then suppose there’s someone who loves you just as much as you love him. How do you think he’d feel if you threw yourself in harm’s way and died or got hurt?”

  Charlotte was quiet. For some reason, Sherlock felt guilt weighing on his heart.

  But he had to be blunt. He could not sugarcoat things. That was when Charlotte broke her silence.

  “Sherlock Liverpool.”

  “Wha- yeah? Do you understand?”

  “Thank you for reminding me. When I thought about all the people who love me and the people I love…I realized that I must press forward after all.”

  “Why?!”

  Charlotte smiled, a little bittersweetly. Sherlock had known her long enough to understand how she felt, but he did not want to acknowledge it.

  “Because…I love this island and the people on it.”

  It was Sherlock’s turn to be silent.

  Then, Charlotte landed the final blow.

  “I care about the people here just as much as you care for me, Sherlock Liverpool.”

  ‘Charlotte.’

  Without a hint of an ulterior motive, she cut to his very heart.

  ‘Charlotte…you really are cruel.’ He thought to himself.

  How many times had they repeated this exchange since they arrived on the island?

  ‘Thirty-five times.’

  The fact that he remembered meant that he had been keeping track.

  Yet each time, the fire in his heart remained unchanged.

  Sherlock reminded himself—

  That he was a hopeless fool, that his sister was innocent but cruel,

  And that, being the fool he was, he loved that cruel sister of his.

  The Case of Lihuang Ei - 2

  In a dark room.

  Looking over the island at night, Lihuang Ei lost himself in the past.

  He had thought that he was only ever permitted to breathe an air damp with the scent of blood.

  For as long as he could remember, he had been raised as a potential organization executive. He had never set foot in a school, raised only in the closed world of the Ei family.

  When he came to the island, he thought that he had finally stepped into a new world. But nothing had changed. The island was even cruder than the Ei family. The air itself was hopeless.

  ‘That’s right. This is the only air I need.’

  He realized that fact at a young age.

  No matter how strong he became, so long as he was raised in a world like this he would inevitably end up throwing himself into an even bloodier world.

  And if he ran, he would be pursued as a traitor.

  But he never even wanted to consider that option.

  In that world, there was only one person who possessed a different ‘color’.

  The blue-eyed woman. Yili and Lilei’s mother.

  Supposedly she was a mistress of his father’s from England. She had been kicked out of the house immediately after giving birth to Yili.

  Though Lihuang’s memories of her were hazy, he remembered that in the air of the Ei family, she alone was kind. She had tried to be like a mother to Lihuang, who had lost his own much earlier.

  Lihuang could not bear that fact.

  Though he was only a child, it had bothered him that someone ‘different’ was being so kind to him. He had feared that, if he let himself be colored by the air around her, he would be cast away from his father and his world.

  So when the woman disappeared, he had breathed a sigh of relief.

  Or at least, he thought he had.

  Even when he heard several years later that she had died, and when he heard that Yili’s sister was on the island, it simply bothered him—and nothing else.

  But the arrival of Lilei—a girl who had absolutely no regard for the air around him—and his meeting half a year prior with a certain young woman slowly but dramatically began to change his life.

  And because he had no idea if the change was positive or negative, Lihuang resolved to quietly accept it. Until the day he found his answer.

  When he boarded the car in the hotel’s underground parking lot alongside his bodyguards, his cell phone began to vibrate.

 

  Taifei was reporting in, as relaxed as ever.

  “I see. We’re on our way.”

  “In person? …You never did mind getting your hands dirty. Munch… You’re the boss now, so hold yourself back—is what I’d say out of principle. But I’m letting you go because I’m curious—are you hoping to die in battle? Do you just enjoy these things like the elders do? Or do you not think at all about these things, just like Lilei?>

  “It doesn’t matter. This island’s small enough that where I go doesn’t affect things in the slightest. …And are you worrying about me? That’s not like you at all, Taifei.”

 

  “What?”

 

  “…! I see. I pray she isn’t caught in the crossfire.”

 

  “Don’t make me laugh. That woman’s very presence screams that the Western District is hospitable even for the most brainless of fools. If we lost her, it would affect morale among the volunteer police and the residents.”

 

  “…! Taifei! You bastard…”

 

  Lihuang hung up. He struggled to regain his composure before commenting loudly enough for his bodyguards to hear.

  “…Asking for a dozen new restaurants at the hotel…the nerve of that bastard.”

  After lying through his teeth, Lihuang put on a fake smile and quietly fell into thought.

  The bodyguards all knew that Lihuang was lying, and that he had—without realizing—begun to obsess over the blond girl from several months earlier. But they remained silent. Without a hint of derision or laughter, as though declaring that they were loyal to their boss no matter his choices.

  Though it was unclear if he was aware of his subordinates’ consideration, Lihuang fell into thought.

  ‘Taifei…one of these days, I am going to wring the fat out of him.

  ‘But his intelligence is too crucial to lose…I can’t turn him against me.

 
; ‘And not only that…he thinks I am free to court anyone. Foolishness.’

  At that point, a question rose to his mind.

  Perhaps he had held some admiration for Yili and Lilei’s western mother.

  And that perhaps he felt the same way towards the blue-eyed detective, who also refused to blend into the hostile air around herself.

  ‘Impossible.

  ‘A girl like her?

  ‘…What does it matter?

  ‘Women mean little to me.

  ‘It does not matter whom I love. Not in the least.’

  Lihuang’s expression did not budge as he departed for the battlefield to put his life on the line.

  —So the innocent smile playing at the corner of his lips also remained.

  The Case of Everyone

  Somewhere in the Eastern District.

  About 20 minutes before the detective siblings spotted the suspicious men—

  “Ohh…”

  Jun breathed a heavy sigh as she walked down the alley in the middle of the night.

  Only when all three chainsaws had run out of fuel did she realize the state of the office.

  Miraculously, Gitarin was the only one injured in the chaos. But the room itself looked as though an alien and a predator had dueled their way through a typhoon in the office.

  That was cause enough for depression, but—

  “Inui? He saw the commotion here and left a while ago.”

  Nazuna’s explanation was what upset Jun the most.

  ‘He saw me acting like…that.

  ‘Of all the times for him to visit…’

  Though her sense of reason had been intact, she had flown into an otherworldly rage—and Inui had seen it all. The thought gave Jun no end of embarrassment.

  She did not dislike how she behaved in her chainsaw high. But of all the scenes to show Inui, it had to be the one where she was swinging her chainsaws at her own boss in the office. Anyone who saw would think she was trouble.

  With a series of sighs, she walked through the island at night.

  ‘So in the end, I never got to talk with Mr. Inui…

  ‘How am I supposed to face him?’

  And even before the matter of the chainsaw high, Jun lived on the artificial island and loved the island itself. Did she even have the right to date people, Jun wondered.

  Inui was a sort of symbol of the island. Perhaps that was why she admired him.

  But that was also a problem in and of itself. Jun did not know if it was even allowed for someone like her to feel love toward a symbol of the island.

  Jun wandered the streets with a heaping helping of self-hatred on her plate.

  And that was when her cell phone rang.

 

  A smile rose to Jun’s face at the sound of her smile-happy subordinate’s voice.

 

  Jun didn’t understand what it was Mii found so funny, but she understood the information.

  Quickly switching gears, she ran towards the scene.

  But even in this new mindset, a part of her was disquieted by the promise of Inui’s presence.

  When his cell phone beeped, Yakumo Amagiri opened his eyes.

  “…Yawn… Oh. Five minutes already? One hour to midnight…I should get going.”

  Getting up as though five minutes of sleep were enough for him, he crept down the side of the building so as to not wake the girl sleeping in the middle of the rooftop.

  On the way, the Killer Ghoul looked up at the night sky and thought to himself.

  ‘The stars are beautiful tonight.

  ‘Just gazing up like this with Miss Nazuna would be more than enough for me.’

  “…Am I too early?”

  Meanwhile, Nazuna Yukimura was already at the fountain.

  She had never been on a date before (although she had in the past pretended to be on one for a Guard Team mission), so she did not even know how early she should be there.

  She did not have to worry about the girls at the dojo, as at night she always left them to someone she trusted.

  What worried her, however, was where she should suggest going that night.

  ‘Maybe we could find a quiet place to go stargazing together?

  ‘Yakumo might make fun of me if I said that.’

  It was a strange point of consensus. But at that point, Nazuna spotted something out of the corner of her eye.

  “Huh?”

  ‘Someone’s here. …Oh, it’s Inui.’

  When she saw the flash of rainbow hair, Nazuna decided for the moment to leave.

  Inui hadn’t noticed her yet, it seemed. And it would be best that he never did.

  ‘If we started chatting and Yakumo showed up…this time he really might kill Inui.’

  By the time Jun arrived at the building complex, a group of men were splayed out on the ground. Western District men dressed in black were rounding them up.

  Realizing it would be a pain if they spotted her, Jun took cover in the distance and decided to observe for the moment—when she spotted a certain figure out of the corner of her eye.

  The island’s very own Killer Ghoul, whose white clothes were dyed red at the hem.

  ‘Mr. Amagiri. What’s he doing here?’

  After Nazuna started contacting him, Yakumo Amagiri had caused considerably less trouble in the Eastern District. But he remained a person of interest to the Guard Team. They still worried that Yakumo might end up hurting Nazuna or worse.

  ‘Does Mr. Amagiri have something to do with this?’

  Though she was doubtful, Jun quietly followed after him.

  When Lihuang arrived at the retrieval site, he personally scrutinized the bodies lying on the ground.

  “Weak. You mean to tell me these peons are running amok on the island, doing as they please?”

  He did not bother trying to hide his abhorrence, glaring at the bodies. At that moment, he spotted a kitten out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘The kitten of the Eastern District. What is she doing here…?’

  At that moment, the captain of the Guard Team took off toward the center of the island.

  ‘Does she have something to do with this?’

  Suspicious, Lihuang quietly followed after her with four bodyguards in tow.

  “Maybe I’m a little early. …Huh? What’s going on over there?”

  When Yakumo arrived at the fountain square, Inui and Kugi happened to be engaged in an all-out brawl.

  Neither of them were using their guns, but both dogs were going out of their way to aim for each other’s vitals.

  Yakumo watched with disinterest and decided it would be a bother if he were to be caught up in the fray. He headed up to the second floor of the mall.

  “I don’t really care, but I hope they finish before midnight. I wouldn’t want our date to get interrupted.”

  A second later—

  A group of newcomers crashed into the scene, and a gunshot resounded across the square.

  When Jun arrived at the square as she chased after Yakumo, she spotted Inui and Kugi, surrounded by armed men.

  “?!”

  She froze, but quickly regained her composure—she was the captain of the Guard Team, after all—and assessed the situation.

  Inui looked as laid-back as ever.

  Kugi didn’t seem to have any expression to begin with.

  ‘I have to do something…’

  Quickly, she drew her chainsaws. But she stopped before she could start the engine.

  Jun remembered what had happened that afternoon.

  Would it really be all right for her to show something so unsightly to Inui again?

  The quest
ion plagued her thoughts.

  But—

  Only for one tenth of a second.

  If she refused to act just because she was afraid of seeming unsightly, she had no right to be the Guard Team’s captain. Jun’s body, thoughts, and the engine in her soul knew that fact full well.

  As she moved, another question rose to her mind.

  Was she, the captain of the Guard Team, justified in crashing a fight involving Inui and this unknown group?

  But Jun shot down the question with a simple answer.

  ‘Right now…I’m off-duty!’

  She pulled the throttle.

  She was starting the engine on her unquestionable determination.

  In other words, the ‘Jun’ who stood amidst the roar of the engines was also unquestionably herself.

  There would be no point in receiving Inui’s love if she had to hide that fact about herself.

  And so, allowing work to get personal, Jun let her engines roar.

  BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRM.

  “Jun?”

  Nazuna, who had been watching the battle from the shadows, flinched at the sound of engines—and quickly spotted Jun leaping into the fray.

  “…Was she tailing Inui all this time? She must really like him.”

  It was a misunderstanding, but not completely.

  ‘Oh well. I have a date of my own waiting after this. I still don’t know if I’ll be able to love Yakumo…but I guess I should go help out Jun, for luck!’

  And she burst forward.

  Without a sound, concealing her every footstep—

  Nazuna became a gust of wind and threw herself into battle for the most selfish of reasons.

  “Miss Nazuna?!”

  Yakumo, who had been watching from the second floor, screamed when he spotted Nazuna. And before he knew it, he was running.

  ‘My god… What is Miss Nazuna doing here so early? …Wait, did I write “11” on the letter? That’s not good.

  ‘No. That’s not the issue here. I hope Miss Nazuna doesn’t get the wrong idea and think I lured her into a trap. But that’s exactly what it looks like! I invite her out with a letter, and when she shows up, she sees a bunch of men armed with guns… It obviously looks like a trap!