It was a wooden bed at least eight years old, bought from a well-known furniture chain in S City. The quality was decent. But getting struck by one of King Crimson's punches — that was the kind of blow that would dent a steel plate. A wooden frame stood no chance. The bed exploded apart, and the man hiding underneath came scrambling out from the wreckage like a sewer rat, wailing in despair.
"Don't — don't kill me! Please! I'll give you the money, all of it! I'm begging you, don't hurt me!"
He raised his face to her, snot and tears running together as he pleaded. The terror in his eyes was completely real. His hair was lank with grease, like he hadn't washed it in weeks. A large, ugly burn scar covered the left side of his face — old, clearly years old. He was clutching a small bundle against his chest, several ten-thousand-yen notes spilling from a tear in the wrapping and sliding onto the floor.
"That Stand is yours?"
"Y-yes, yes!" He nodded frantically, every motion radiating the desire to live. "It's called Born This Way."
"Why did you attack me?"
"Someone — someone gave me this money... told me to watch with a telescope every day, here, and the moment I saw a woman with pink hair coming through, to use my Stand to attack her... I really don't know anything else, I swear!" He prostrated himself at Inori's feet, begging.
"Was it Yoshikage Kira?"
Inori raised an eyebrow.
"I don't know, I really don't know his name... I've never even seen his face."
"How did your Stand awaken?"
"An arrow — it was an arrow!"
At the mention of the Stand, the man suddenly burst into something close to a shout.
"I was stabbed by it... it hurt so much, but then all my wounds just healed. And after that I had this — Born This Way."
"Who stabbed you?" Inori pressed.
"I — I don't know... I was just on my way home one evening and someone attacked me. Then I met that man with his face covered... he told me all this, what to do. I had no choice..." The man's face contorted in misery. He touched his scar and sighed. "I'm just a man society threw away because of this face. If I refused to help him, he said he'd hurt my family..."
"How long ago was this?"
Inori had no patience for his sob story. She cut him off.
—If he was hoping for pity, he'd chosen the wrong target.
"Three days, three days!"
He answered immediately.
"Why so fast? Did you have that one rehearsed?"
"N-no! Lady, since I got this Stand I've been terrified every single day. I remember everything clearly. I really am not lying!"
...Three days? That was exactly the day she'd arrived in Morioh.
Inori took in all of it, then pinched her chin, falling into thought.
There wasn't really a question worth asking anymore. Who but Yoshikage Kira would set up something this petty? That settled it — he was the source of every abnormality in Morioh right now. But what exactly had he done? With Bites the Dust on his side, it made sense he'd be making elaborate preparations against her. The question was — how was he managing to produce Part 8 Stands?
"You said an arrow stabbed you and you got the Stand from it — what did the arrow look like?"
Inori pressed on.
"I didn't get a good look."
"Hm?" She felt an itch on her brow and lifted a hand to brush off a flake of melted frost. Then suddenly her voice dropped, ice-cold and merciless. "Something stabbed you and you didn't get a good look? Have you got the eyes of a mole?"
"Don't be angry, miss!" The man flinched violently, then stammered out, "It was — it was just an old arrowhead. Like an antique."
"Anything else? Any distinctive marks on the head? An insect ornament or something?"
"No... uh, wait."
He'd been in too much shock at the time, and the visibility at dusk had been limited, but Inori's prompt had jogged something loose in his memory. There had been something strange about that arrow.
"There was something tied to it."
"Tied to it?" Inori's eyes widened. This was the key clue to cracking the riddle.
"It looked like..."
He frowned and hemmed and hawed for a long moment, closing his eyes to try to picture the scene. Several seconds passed before he finished the sentence, uncertain.
"Looked like... a piece of bone. An animal bone."
—Bone?
Did an Arrow like that exist in the original? Weren't there only five regular Stand Arrows and one Requiem Arrow with the insect? What was the bone for? Was this another piece of DIO's body Kira had left behind somehow? But — but what did that have to do with the Part 8 Stands?
"Do you know where he went?"
Inori shook her head, filed the clue away for later, and pressed on.
"I — I don't even know his name..."
The man was at a loss. To save his life he'd confessed everything he knew, but on this one he genuinely had nothing. The man behind it had been too careful. Apart from the distinct, slightly hoarse quality of his voice, he hadn't left a single thread to pull on.
Inori didn't push him further. She stood up slowly, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain aside. Light flooded into the wrecked room. A battered telescope sat on a stand in the corner.
"You said you watch passers-by every day."
"So tell me — did you see a blue sedan come through this morning? The color of the toilet cleaner you tip into a toilet bowl."
Inori remembered it clearly. In the original story, Yoshikage Kira's first appearance had been at the wheel of a car that color. Around here there was a luxury villa district and a public beach, but April was off-season for the beach, and most people heading to the beach took a different shortcut. Almost no cars passed this way unless they belonged to villa residents.
"There's a lot of cars in that color, miss... but today... yeah, just the once."
"When?"
Inori tensed.
"Right before you got here." The man answered honestly. "Just before you. It was heading toward the station... probably one of the residents."
"The station?"
—Yoshikage Kira didn't go to work? Identifying her target purely by the color of a car was reckless, but at this point that thin thread was all she had.
So Kira had actually thought to set up an ambush along the road to keep her from getting close. Given how careful that man was, he'd have his house wired and trapped from end to end. Pressing forward might be even more dangerous.
She didn't know what other Part 8 Stands existed in this place. Charging in blind wasn't smart. Even the invincible Jotaro had nearly been brought down by a few rats. Even King Crimson couldn't anticipate every strange ability out there.
—Wait! Paisley Park!
Inori smacked her forehead. How had she forgotten she had such a powerful information Stand on her side? With Paisley Park, finding one Yoshikage Kira would be child's play.
"Paisley Park — give me Yoshikage Kira's location!"
Inori spread the map again and gave her order.
The man watched, completely lost. Could maps these days be voice-controlled by a single piece of paper? But then he remembered the woman was a Stand user, and he didn't dare ask anything.
Receiving its new command, Paisley Park began to work. The detailed view of the house and its surroundings rapidly vanished. Then, at fast-forward speed, the map redrew itself as the broad overview of Morioh. When the work was done, on the left side of the map a green dot bloomed — the location of the target.
"How can it be... it's actually..."
Inori stared, the map almost slipping from her fingers.
—The cemetery!
—Rohan is in danger!