A day later.
With the two noisy cats no longer at home, the place fell into a hush that felt almost deafening.
Randou no longer needed to instruct Chuuya, nor did he have to endure Ranpo's X-ray-like curious gaze upon him. His entire being relaxed, and he rested his head against Asou Akiya's shoulder. "Akiya, when shall we go traveling?"
This New Year, the two of them had not gone anywhere.
Looking back, it had been nearly half a year since their last hot spring trip.
"Traveling, you say..." Asou Akiya gazed with him at the garden's scenery, where flowers bloomed in magnificent profusion. Compared to the city's nightscape, hiding away in this secluded villa and watching blossoms burst forth upon the branches held a charm all its own.
"I can squeeze out two days of free time in the near future, though I can't stray too far from Yokohama. We could just manage to catch the final batch of early spring cherry blossoms."
Asou Akiya peeled a mandarin orange and placed a segment into Randou's mouth.
Randou took it in.
After biting through and releasing the juice, Randou's brows knitted together. His nose tip quivered from the sourness, as though he had bitten into a defective, spoiled orange. Having been raised by Akiya, he had never wanted for material things. His standard of living might not reach the absolute pinnacle, but it surpassed ninety-nine percent of Japanese citizens. After all, how many others had an unparalleled good man who would invest across entire industries for the sake of his beloved?
Randou said, "So sour, Akiya."
Asou Akiya kissed him. "Not sour anymore."
Living in Japan with a Chinese soul, learning the romance of the French, and falling in love across worlds—this life, spent in this beautiful two-dimensional world, had not been lived in vain.
On the road from Yokohama to Aomori Prefecture, Nakahara Chuuya was utterly furious.
"How can you not know the way?!"
He had followed Ranpo to the train station, only to end up lost outside for a full hour. At the time, he had assumed the station had changed locations, so he let the other wander about as he pleased, thinking they had plenty of time and nothing to worry about.
And the result?
The result was this fellow declaring with utter righteousness: "I got lost!"
Nakahara Chuuya wanted to shatter the other's skull to see what remained inside.
Wearing the black-rimmed glasses, Edogawa Ranpo munched on snacks and was cheerfully dragged by Nakahara Chuuya toward the correct route, saying, "I'm wearing Akiya's glasses!"
Nakahara Chuuya, in the middle of buying tickets, turned his head. "Hah? What does that have to do with glasses?"
Edogawa Ranpo's face was so tender it looked like it could be pinched to draw water. His features were childish, and the black-rimmed glasses did little to make him appear more mature—at best, they lent him a slight air of a school campus student.
"Akiya's tool," Edogawa Ranpo touched the frame. "can suppress my Ability!"
Nakahara Chuuya: "..."
Edogawa Ranpo continued, "I'm currently in a no-Ability state. I've lost my superior reasoning capabilities, so not knowing the way to the train station is perfectly normal."
Nakahara Chuuya: "Tch."
As a considerate boy who had been raised with a sense of morality, the orange-haired youth suppressed his urge to retort, finished paying, collected the train tickets, and dragged this older yet utterly useless young man onto the train.
Edogawa Ranpo paid no mind to his rough handling. His eyes narrowed into crescents as the words Akiya had spoken floated through his mind.
Last night, the black-haired youth who had helped tuck him in bent down and whispered beside the ear of Ranpo, who had been pretending to sleep while playing on his handheld game console: "I'm entrusting Chuuya to your care, Ranpo."
Edogawa Ranpo thought to himself, "Entrusting him to me?"
He muttered, looking at the little orange cat who knew nothing, and gradually felt a sense of challenge toward the trip to Aomori Prefecture. Akiya wouldn't say such a thing without reason. With the little orange cat's combat prowess, ordinary people couldn't get near him, so the trouble they encountered would have nothing to do with fighting ability?
Interesting.
Far too interesting.
What sort of person would appear there for him to contend with?
Under Nakahara Chuuya's puzzled gaze, Edogawa Ranpo puffed out his chest, brimming with self-assurance.
"What have you discovered now?" Nakahara Chuuya asked habitually.
"Lord Ranpo—" Edogawa Ranpo beamed brilliantly, "—is indeed the big brother of the little orange cat!"
"..." Nakahara Chuuya ground his teeth. He couldn't get angry. Papa had said this person had been long oppressed intellectually, and after the bindings were released, his chuunibyou had erupted. In the short term, he wouldn't be able to act like a normal person.
Forget the short term—he felt this person was acting from the bottom of his heart!
The absolute pinnacle of self-deception!
The straight-line distance from Yokohama to Aomori Prefecture was over six hundred kilometers, and the train ride would take some time. Nakahara Chuuya pulled out the poetry collection he carried with him and continued studying Mr. Randou's works.
Edogawa Ranpo watched this, his eyes flickering, his cheeks puffing out. Was he studying this hard?
He absolutely refused to admit he felt the tiniest bit afraid. The intelligence of the goldfish masses couldn't comprehend his novels, and mediocre adults couldn't see the world as he and Akiya did. To accommodate his readers' level, he could only force himself to explain his writing in exhaustive detail, which drove him utterly mad.
[Should I switch careers and write poetry instead?]
[It seems poetry doesn't need detailed writing—it relies entirely on inspiration, resonance, and… spontaneous expression?]
With this thought, Edogawa Ranpo pulled out a notebook and pen, the same set as Chuuya's, and began scribbling a few lines of poetry. He composed it into a text message and cheerfully sent it to Mr. Randou, then received Mr. Randou's reply: [Ranpo, I'm not skilled at reasoning. Is this a deduction puzzle you sent me?]
Edogawa Ranpo's smile froze: [It's not a puzzle, it's poetry!]
[Randou: I showed it to Akiya. Akiya says to honestly go write your novels. You and Chuuya have different types of minds—there's no need to compare. You are both the most outstanding.]
Edogawa Ranpo cupped his face in his hands like a cat who had stolen a taste of fish.
He'd been praised!
The adults at home understood him best!
When the two arrived in Aomori Prefecture, the "Arahabaki" mascot could hardly be called ubiquitous, yet whenever they asked a passerby for directions, the passerby could always point them toward a place where an "Arahabaki" statue stood. Standing before an exhibition hall, Nakahara Chuuya's expression cracked apart. His neck creaked as he tilted his head back to look up at the colossal, supersized "Arahabaki" above—a thing that was simultaneously fat and short.
It sported two tuft-like ornaments on its head, two frog-like eyes, broad shoulders, a humanoid physique, and grotesquely mismatched limbs that seemed almost monstrous. It wasn't particularly frightening, but it was undeniably ugly-cute.
Neither Edogawa Ranpo nor Nakahara Chuuya had the habit of searching things up on their phones beforehand. Upon arriving at the location, the black-haired youth pulling his suitcase first burst into laughter, tipping backward. "Wow—so this is the great god!"
How on earth did the people of the Yokohama foreign concession imagine this thing!
They actually pictured "Arahabaki" as a divine being that summoned hellfire!
Nakahara Chuuya's complexion turned ashen. He couldn't help covering his face. "Arahabaki... looks like this..."
And to think he had once wondered—could he be Arahabaki?
Too ugly!
No, too short!
"Stop laughing, passersby are staring." Nakahara Chuuya forcibly suppressed his sense of shame and tugged at the wildly laughing Edogawa Ranpo. "Let's go find a hotel and check in."
The mere thought of having to write an investigative report about this thing made Nakahara Chuuya want to weep without tears, regretting that he had ever come here.
How much better it would have been to stay in Suribachi City. Why had he ever left Yokohama?
Curiosity killed the cat.jpg
That night, after Nakahara Chuuya had arranged their accommodations, Edogawa Ranpo ran out onto the balcony to look at the unfamiliar Aomori Prefecture beyond the hotel. He removed his glasses and rubbed his slightly unaccustomed eyes.
He dialed Asou Akiya's number. "Akiya"
Asou Akiya answered in a split second. "Be good, sleep early, goodnight."
Beep beep
Edogawa Ranpo: "???"
He quickly redialed, and before the other could hang up, he shouted, "Don't you dare hang up! We saw 'Arahabaki,' but I didn't see any interesting people appear!"
Asou Akiya's finger hovered over the end-call button, unable to press it. He drew in a deep breath.
"I never promised you that such a person would definitely appear."
"You did!"
"I did not."
"You clearly did!"
"Ranpo, just as you fantasize every day that you're the emperor's son, when has your father ever been the emperor?"
"...How embarrassing, Akiya, how could you say that out loud?"
"Fortunately you still have some sense of shame. Stop calling me at this hour, or I will take it as you wanting to bully Randou. When you return, Randou will properly deal with you."
"I didn't!"
"Returning to your first question, I'll give you a lead—"
To deal with Ranpo, Asou Akiya forcibly endured the torment of not being able to move freely upon Randou's body. Randou was already drawing in sharp breaths, looking at him with resentful eyes as he took the call.
"The Tsushima family!"
With a click, the call ended.
Edogawa Ranpo vaguely heard Mr. Randou's whimpering sounds and shuddered.
His playful mood instantly vanished.
He was going to be in trouble when he got home!
His heart panicked. He put his glasses back on, shuffled in his slippers, and ran back to find the orange-haired boy who was drying his hair. "Chuuya, can you beat your mom?"
Nakahara Chuuya stopped mid-motion, his hair sticking up at odd angles, and looked at him with a "have you lost your mind" expression. "Why would I hit Mr. Randou?"
Edogawa Ranpo said sheepishly, "I accidentally offended him."
Nakahara Chuuya sneered, "Congratulations."
Edogawa Ranpo pressed, "Answer me quickly. If you can't beat him, can you at least help me block him?"
Nakahara Chuuya considered the actual circumstances and thought seriously. "Can't beat him, can't block him. My gravity Ability cannot cover the power of a subspace. The conclusion is—you're done for."
Wearing his glasses, Edogawa Ranpo let out a wail and rolled around on the bed. "No!"
Nakahara Chuuya said indifferently, "Have you done your homework?"
At the mention of homework, Edogawa Ranpo's fussing came to an abrupt halt.
—He didn't want to write it.
—But if he didn't, not even Akiya would help him when they got home.
Having stayed less than two days at Aomori Prefecture's finest hotel, Edogawa Ranpo, through a series of godlike maneuvers, managed to get them lost right in front of the region's foremost wealthy family. The family before them seemed to have once been illustrious, but now their gates were deserted, having fallen into decline during the war years.
Even so, what lay before their eyes was a sprawling mansion occupying nearly a thousand tsubo* of land, beyond the reach of ordinary people.
*{Note: 1 Tsubo is ≈ 3.3 square meters (m²) or 35.58 square feet (ft²).}
Nakahara Chuuya said weakly, "Your ability to get lost keeps reaching new heights."
Edogawa Ranpo let out a haughty laugh, removed his glasses with increasingly stylish flair, and stepped forward, widening his green eyes to examine the traces of this family—was this the family Akiya was concerned about?
"A dull and rigid family. Because they backed the wrong side politically, they were regarded as hawks. Their patron fell, and they themselves lost their advantage in factional struggles." Edogawa Ranpo assessed. "Living in this kind of old-fashioned family built upon money and face must be terribly suffocating. It's entirely possible someone would want to run away from home—"
The security personnel inside the mansion had already noticed the two children and were coming out to drive them away.
Nakahara Chuuya was utterly mortified.
Edogawa Ranpo shouted loudly, "We heard this is Aomori Prefecture's most famous family! We came to visit! Our after-school assignment is to write about what we saw and heard in Aomori Prefecture!"
Nakahara Chuuya's face flushed crimson, and he hurriedly urged, "Let's go somewhere else."
Edogawa Ranpo paid him no heed and struck a pose.
"Chuuya, take my picture! I think Akiya will like my photos!"
"...Have you no shame!"
Nakahara Chuuya couldn't sway him and could only steel himself, pulling out his phone under the security personnel's displeased gazes to take pictures of Ranpo, who absolutely refused to leave the mansion's entrance.
Edogawa Ranpo ran over with lively steps to check the photo's effect and was dissatisfied. "Your technique is terrible!"
To achieve the result of "pleasing Akiya," Edogawa Ranpo, like someone utterly incapable of reading the room, placed his own phone into the security guard's hand and said to the bewildered man, "As long as you help us take a nice picture, we'll leave right away!"
The security guard's veins bulged, but mindful of the Tsushima family's reputation, he swallowed his anger and said, "Leave immediately after the picture is taken, kids."
With that, he took a photo of the two mischievous brats, Edogawa Ranpo and Nakahara Chuuya.
Photographs possessed an intangible power to freeze moments in time. The security guard was no longer quite so angry. In this family that was usually so lifeless, seeing such lively children was a rare occurrence indeed.
A few minutes later, Edogawa Ranpo and Nakahara Chuuya ran off.
The security guard complained to his colleague, "Children these days aren't afraid of adults at all."
His colleague nodded, feeling the same way, and thought of his own mischievous child at home. "Nothing to be done about it. Times are different. There are more and more only children now, and they're spoiled beyond all reason." Remembering the situation inside the mansion, he lowered his voice and said, "Only children have their benefits too. Unlike the Tsushima family—at least I can take my own son to the amusement park every week."
In the hushed mansion, a small figure stood in the corner behind the door, listening to their conversation. Sunlight pooled before the entrance, falling just an inch short of the wooden clogs, unable to banish the shadows.
It seemed to be a child of no great age.
No one had noticed him.
Suddenly, he stepped forward, and at last the sunlight kissed his face.
The boy who stepped out from the shadows was astonishingly fair-skinned. His eyes were bright and limpid, his eyelashes thick and long, like two delicate brushes. There was no doubt that he possessed a beauty found only once in ten thousand.
Yet his entire face was cold and somber. Against the backdrop of the traditional Japanese mansion, he seemed eerily ghostly, exuding an unsettling aura.
As though he were something born from the darkest depths of the human heart—
A Hannya.
...
Hearing the commotion outside, the sixth son of the Tsushima family evaded the servants' supervision and came to the entrance alone, yet failed to see anyone appear.
As though the vibrant, living clamor from moments ago had been nothing but an illusion.
Curious cat peeking.jpg
Disappointment.
Home was too boring. Extremely extremely boring.