When the City Wears the Mask of Frailty

Chapter 15 : Chapter 15

Chapter 15: If I Schemed Against You, Did You Expect Me to Tell You Myself Too?

Meanwhile, elsewhere.

Blue Hawaii, who had originally been happily enjoying food and drinks on the Organization’s dime with Vermouth, suddenly felt a subtle tug of connection. He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. For the first time, the effortless composure he always wore shifted, if only slightly.

Across from him, Vermouth noticed the subtle change in his mood almost at once. Covering her red lips lightly, she asked, “Did something happen, Fick?”

“You could say that.” Hawaii picked up a handkerchief and dabbed at the corner of his mouth. Though he was still sitting upright, he already looked as though he were about to leave on the spot. “To break an appointment with a lady halfway through is terribly rude.”

He sighed. With a face like his, even sighing looked charming. “...It’s only that something unexpected has come up, and I need to deal with it.”

He first sent a message to Beika—and, just as expected, received a cold reply openly admitting it. He let out a soft sigh. A trace of danger surfaced at the corners of his brows and eyes, though his outward bearing remained perfectly polished.

Hawaii pondered for a moment.

...There was nothing for it. Something had happened in Hawaii’s own territory, and he had to go there himself. Just going there and back would already take quite a bit of time.

Tch.

In the end, he opened the mailboxes of two other people and grandly announced:

Hawaii could not go.

Those two could go in his place.

...But just thinking about how it was most likely that [London] had arrived now made him unhappy.

It was like having prey snatched away from him. The leopard’s anger rose in displeasure, and even the amber eyes that usually brimmed with honey darkened slightly.

After studying his expression, Vermouth lifted a brow, raised her glass, and said with a smile, “It really must be urgent... Is it related to that police officer of yours?”

After all, Blue Hawaii had made no attempt to hide it, and the features in the photograph were much too distinctive. With even a little effort, anyone could find out who the man was.

Blue Hawaii put on an expression that seemed mildly troubled but no less graceful for it. He picked up his own glass and lightly clinked it against the blonde woman’s. “Am I really that obvious, madam?”

“Oh, not exactly.” Vermouth took a sip from her tall glass, supporting her chin lightly with one hand while gently swirling the liquor with the other, her eyes following the shifting liquid. “It’s simply that I’ve never seen you show this kind of emotion during anything related to the Organization’s work.”

“You needn’t worry about that.” Blue Hawaii wore a captivating smile. In his hand he held a sharp dinner knife, and the silver blade spun deftly between his fingers, dangerous yet impossible to look away from.

The words between the two of them were all politely distant, yet somehow produced another kind of atmosphere entirely. “So long as my interests remain aligned with the Organization’s, I won’t do anything that could be called betrayal, you know?”

Vermouth gave no clear response. Her gaze drifted meaningfully to the neck now hidden from view, then to the knife he was playing with so skillfully. “Is that so? And what if the Organization’s interests were to conflict with your little policeman?”

“You needn’t worry about that either.” The man with the wolf-tail haircut smiled, and in his amber eyes shone a warmth intoxicating enough to drown in. He kissed the cold silver knife, and though he seemed to be speaking to Vermouth, it also sounded as if he were speaking to someone else entirely. His tone was gentle, yet carried a chill beneath it.

“—My dear, I don’t lose my mind so easily.”

*

On the street.

The rain was still falling in a fine, whispering drizzle. Christie naturally opened the black umbrella that rarely left his side. “One umbrella between us is enough.”

Whenever the young Englishman smiled, he carried a melancholy charm that made people want to sink into it. His pale gray eyes curved slightly. “After all, none of the others work as well as this one... You know that.”

He passed over the subject lightly. The black umbrella had already spread above the two of them, covering them both beneath its canopy. Christie asked, “Where shall we go?”

Yuki Mu was considering exactly that question.

—Where should they go?

He searched his memory for somewhere nearby, somewhere that was at least a little safer.

At the most superficial level of information...

To the east, two shops had both borrowed from loan sharks. To the north, the owners of three storefronts were entangled in a bizarre mess of love and hate. A murder had happened to the east just yesterday. If they went west, there was mostly road, with hardly any shops along the way, only a bridge—but lately, a pair of criminals had apparently been scouting that place regularly...

Beika fell into thought.

Then he spoke expressionlessly. “You lead.”

Christie lowered his head slightly and looked at his friend in confusion. “?”

“There’s a saying young people seem to use these days—city walk...” Yuki Mu also tilted his head up a little, looking at the professor of criminal psychology who stood more than half a head taller than him. “You don’t need to know where you’re going. You just follow your heart and wander through the city.”

Unable to decide which direction to take, Yuki Mu finally chose to give up entirely and kicked the ball away with perfect elegance, making rare use of rhetoric.

“I’ll just stay with you.”

—It was the sort of thing that would have made Hagiwara Kenji, or anyone else from the First Investigation Division, suspect Yuki Mu had been possessed.

Double standards weren’t meant to be this blatant!!!

Christie’s eyes brightened a little. It was as though some of the mist had been brushed away from them. He turned his head aside, coughed softly twice, then straightened his overcoat slightly and replied, “All right. Then let’s just wander.”

—And yet less than half an hour later, Yuki Mu had fallen into deep self-reflection.

Why?

Why had they walked down this street?

Why had they gone into this shop?

At the side, Christie noticed that although his friend still wore the same cold, expressionless face, his emerald eyes had already begun to go blank. Barely restraining a laugh, he quickly coughed twice to cover it up.

But there was no way Yuki Mu would be fooled. He immediately shot him a sharp look. “You’re laughing at me.”

Christie still held the umbrella in one hand. With the other, he raised a hand in surrender. Even the crow on his shoulder flapped its wings along with him. “How could I?”

But the professor of criminal psychology, who could normally lecture with perfect fluency in a classroom, stumbled over his words. Since he never lied to his friend, he could only shift the topic in a rather clumsy way.

“...By the way, I hadn’t noticed before. There’s a mole on your chin.”

He pointed vaguely toward the area just below the right side of Yuki Mu’s lip. Because the change of subject was so awkward, there was even a trace of uncertainty in his tone. A hint of shyness crept into his smile as he repeated himself. “...I really hadn’t noticed before.”

Yuki Mu’s movements paused almost imperceptibly.

Then he lightly kicked Christie once, and just as stiffly changed the subject himself—

“Forget that for now.” Listening to the voice coming from the center of the crowd inside the shop, he spoke in a tone full of numb exhaustion. “...Do something about your family’s.”

Inside, a pure British accent was speaking at astonishing speed without pause.

“Oh, sir, I do feel sorry for you... for the fact that after defaulting on your debts, you could actually think of such an idiotic way to avoid responsibility. As an aside, if possible, I would very much like to examine the structure of your brain...”

Yuki Mu looked at Christie.

...Dr. Watson didn’t come?

Christie looked back innocently.

No?

Yuki Mu: “......”

This version of Sherlock was still the one who had only just recently met Dr. Watson... He hadn’t gone through much yet.

Yuki Mu sighed silently.

I only hope little Shinichi can handle it.

What greater happiness was there than facing your idol before he’d fully matured into his final form!!!

Yuki Mu tugged lightly at the hem of Christie’s overcoat. “Go. Quickly.”

Yet for once, the citizens of Beika had not failed their city consciousness.

Just as Yuki Mu and Christie were about to make it to the door and escape successfully—

“Ahhh—!!!”

A scream so familiar it nearly brought tears to the eyes rang out.

A woman with terror on her face came running out of the restroom inside the shop.

Her voice shook.

“...Someone’s dead.”