Chapter 2.7

The buzzer's sure to sound three times

After leaving the police station, we discussed Phantom Thief Arsene… Or that's what I figured we'd do, but Siesta betrayed my expectations.

"These two should be ours."

Siesta and I lowered ourselves into a pair of theater seats. For some reason, we were at a Broadway theater to catch a musical.

"Now really isn't the time for stuff like this."

"Hurrying won't necessarily help us find the answer we're looking for," Siesta declared calmly, looking down at the pamphlet in her hands. There had to be some kind of logic behind this decision of hers, right? "Still, it's been a long time since we did this. Two years ago, wasn't it?" she asked, reminiscing. We'd visited this theater before, on her suggestion. "Last time, there was a terrorist incident during the show, so we weren't able to enjoy it properly."

"So this is a redo, huh? …Actually, it seems like all we do is get dragged into stuff like that."

"Mostly because of you, Kimi."

We spent the time before the curtain went up bantering. It had been two years.

Back then, I seemed to remember talking about making it up later. However, a year after that, I'd realized that was a promise we wouldn't get to keep. Who'd have thought it would happen now…?

"Well? Over the past year, have you matured into a man who looks good at musicals and other stylish cultural scenes?"

"Well, I am eighteen and all. Formal situations don't make me nervous, and escorting women is my specialty," I told her, dodging her probing question. "During the past year, not only have I gone shopping with them and had dinner with them, but I've hung out with them at pools and casinos while on vacation. I can even invite them to bars."

"…I see. Not that it has anything to do with me if you grow up and get along well with other women."

I'd managed to step on some sort of landmine. Siesta's mood had obviously soured.

"I'm kidding. All those women were either Natsunagi, Saikawa, or Charlie."

Not only that, but it had all happened over the past couple of months. From Siesta's death until I met Natsunagi, I'd done nothing but soak in tepid routine.

"It is true that I've gained more experience with a lot of stuff, though," I told her. Siesta looked at me, perplexed. "Well, you know. First, let's wake up Natsunagi. After that, once things calm down—"

As we talked, we were dreaming of a day somewhere in the future. "Want to go somewhere together?"

"—Yes, that sounds good." The opening buzzer sounded.

"There's nothing like a Broadway musical on actual Broadway, is there?"

Three hours later, as we walked back to our hotel, Siesta stretched. Her hands reached up toward the sky and the crescent moon far overhead.

"The funniest part was when the two leads started making out and you got

really uncomfortable."

"Don't enjoy it in ways that make no sense. Watch the show, not me."

"Oh, then I guessed right? It was so dark, I couldn't actually see your face."

That was a dirty trick…

The corners of Siesta's lips curved up slightly. Then she took three steps ahead of me. "We should be getting back to Japan, though."

"…Yeah, I'm worried about Natsunagi."

In the end, we hadn't managed to see Scarlet and currently had no clues on how to wake Natsunagi. There was no point in staying here any longer. As Siesta said, we should return to Japan as soon as possible.

"...…"

"Assistant?" The next thing I knew, Siesta was standing in front of me, looking into my face. "Were you thinking about the Phantom Thief ?"

…This ace detective really did see everything. What Ms. Fuubi had told us was still bothering me. "Yeah. I was wondering how a jailbird turned people around the world into terrorists."

Even if Phantom Thief Arsene did have a way to control others like Ms. Fuubi and Siesta said, it seemed like it would be tough to pull off from inside a cell.

"Good point. If he'd manipulated a prison guard, for example, it would have been easy for him to break out himself. I can't think of a reason for him to do that to total strangers all over the world."

Exactly. The tactic Arsene had used seemed like an extremely roundabout way of doing things. If breaking out of prison had been his first and only goal, there had to have been a more efficient method. There was a major contradiction between what Arsene was capable of and the results of his actions. That seemed to be the biggest mystery here.

"Do you know anything else about the Phantom Thief, Siesta?" Up until now, she'd never gone out of her way to tell me things. However, since I'd learned about the Tuners and gotten closer to the world's darker side, she probably wouldn't hide information without a good reason now.

"Arsene always was a mysterious figure. Even I don't know much about him, besides his abilities as a phantom thief. However, one thing I do know is that…"

With that preface, Siesta gave me new information on the Phantom Thief.

"If Arsene steals from someone, that person will never notice."

According to Siesta, he'd been given the position of Phantom Thief in recognition of those overwhelming skills.

The victim would never realize something went missing, much less that it had been stolen. The old me would probably have wondered if that was possible; I wouldn't have been convinced. However, I'd forgotten the truth of Siesta's death once, because of that pollen. Siesta had also had her memories of meeting Natsunagi and Alicia stolen.

Things that were lost this way were washed out to sea and over the horizon by fuzzy, pixelated waves, without their owner ever noticing they'd vanished. Could Phantom Thief Arsene steal wills and hearts that deftly, too? And his victims would never even know he'd done it…

"Still." As I stood silent, Siesta continued. "You're actively trying to solve this incident. Even though you used to look so put out whenever I brought in a job… You've grown." Stretching a little, Siesta patted my head. "Physically too, at some point." For some reason, her smile looked lonely.

"…Quit it." I reached up to knock her hand away, but my regrets raced through my mind, and I ended up lowering my arm again.

As Siesta said, we didn't necessarily have to be the ones to solve this problem. Ms. Fuubi might have gone out of her way to bring it up to us because she was hoping for something from the Ace Detective, but even then, no one was forcing us. Still, I'd stuck my nose into this case because—

"If I seem enthusiastic, it's because this job is special." "Special?" Siesta tousled my hair, looking perplexed.

…If I don't make her stop soon, my hair will be too messy to be seen in public at all.

"Yeah. According to what Mia told me, the Phantom Thief asked Seed for something as a condition for stealing the sacred text. If what he asked for was one of his seeds, I thought it might be the key to solving this case."

In other words, I'd thought this might be an extra inning of the primordial seed crisis. If so, then the Ace Detective and her assistant should deal with this as well.

"—I see." Seeming satisfied, Siesta removed her hand from my head. "Even so, wasn't there anything they could have done before he escaped?"

Why should we have to scramble like this now? I grumbled about the other Tuners and the group above them. "And they didn't strip the position of Phantom Thief from Arsene? Why not? If he stole the sacred text, it wouldn't have been a crazy thing to do."

"I don't know much about what's happened during the past year, but the selection of Tuners is ultimately the decision of the top brass. They may have had a reason to let Arsene stay the Phantom Thief and to lock him up instead of killing him. Apart from whether or not that was the right move…" Siesta wrapped up her speech.

"But, yes." She gave me two light pats on the shoulder. "You're able to view things from multiple angles now. Continue to develop that trait."

"…I haven't heard that irritating compliment in quite a while."

"And so…" Siesta fixed her straightforward blue eyes on me. "I want you to stay by Nagisa's side and support her." As she said it, she took her left hand from my shoulder. Just as I was about to respond—"Assistant, it looks like it's about time."

"Time? …!"

The alley was dark; the sun had gone down completely.

As if seeping out of the darkness, or from the shadows of the electric lights, the white demon appeared.

One of the twelve shields that protected the world—the Vampire, Scarlet.

His glaring golden eyes were fixed on the person next to me, as if he were sizing up his prey. When he spoke, I saw red blood on his teeth.

"It's been a long time—Daydream."

 The white demon and the whereabouts of the soul

His white suit seemed to float in the darkness, and his red necktie reminded me of blood.

This man's name was Scarlet—and he was an actual vampire.

I'd first encountered him a few weeks ago, in the parking garage under a TV station. Ever since then, it had been really hard to say whether we were enemies or allies.

"We finally meet," Siesta said. Smiling a little, she gazed at the vampire

who was leaning against the wall.

Apparently she'd adjusted our schedule so that we'd meet him here. The vampire never appeared outside while the sun was up. Siesta hadn't gone to that musical just for fun.

"Ha! I see, I see. You missed me so much that you returned from the dead, hm? What an admirable woman." Scarlet nodded to himself with apparent satisfaction.

"Um, no. I came to see you because I just happened to have business with you, that's all."

"There's no need to be embarrassed. Not as my former bride candidate." "Scarlet, what did you just say? 'Bride'? Siesta is? Whose?"

"Assistant, don't make the conversation more complicated. And don't draw your gun over a thing like this."

…She could say that, but from the way Scarlet had talked before, there was definitely some sort of deep history between these two. There was a decent possibility that he had something on Siesta and was threatening her, for example. If so, as her assistant, wasn't there, you know, something I should do?

"And we've met again sooner than I expected, human." As I was thinking, Scarlet's eyes had turned to me.

"…Yeah. We came to pick your brain about something." I had plenty of other things to discuss with this guy right now besides his relationship with Siesta. The ace detective and I exchanged looks, then got down to business.

"Scarlet." Siesta took half a step toward the vampire. "Do you know how to return consciousness to a human who won't wake up?"

That was why she'd come to consult the Vampire after the Inventor.

As a vampire, Scarlet could raise the dead. Those he revived came back empty of everything except the strongest instinct they'd developed while they were alive. In other words, we thought he might be able to draw human instincts or awareness to the surface. Siesta was asking Scarlet how to wake up our sleeping friend.

"Where do you suppose human souls dwell?" Scarlet asked us instead of answering. "In the brain, or there?" His golden eyes looked down at the left side of Siesta's chest.

Where in the body was the human "heart," or soul, located? Even if I got a little more specific and replaced those terms with "consciousness"—even

then, philosophy, psychology, medicine, and the other sciences would each give different answers. Philosophy put more weight on thought. Psychology emphasized sensation. Medicine made distinctions based on stimulus and response. There were infinite ways to interpret human consciousness.

In Siesta's case, possibly due to the effects of the seed, her consciousness had been in her physical heart. Meanwhile, since Hel was Natsunagi's second personality, she'd probably slept in her mind, as a backup of sorts. Since Natsunagi was the main personality, was her awareness also generated by her brain? In scientific terms, that might be the case.

"...…"

I realized that Scarlet was gazing at me, a faint, cold smile on his face. "The whereabouts of human consciousness… Well, I don't know the answer to that myself." He looked as if he were showing off.

What, you act all mysterious, and then you don't know, either?

"That was the world's biggest waste of time…"

"And he acts so proud of it." Siesta gave Scarlet a disgusted look.

"There's no help for that. The Undead I create arbitrarily come back with an instinct intact. My will has nothing to do with it."

"You mean it doesn't happen because you want it to?"

"No, just as I'm not living like this because I want to." Scarlet's response was inscrutable. I wanted to ask what he meant, but his beautiful, terrible profile gave me pause.

"The one thing I can say is this," he told us. "Even if it's only a strand of their hair or a bit of a tooth, as long as I have a physical piece of them, the dead will come back. In that sense, human instinct, or consciousness, must dwell in every fragment of their DNA." By the time Scarlet finished that sentence, he'd resumed his usual aloof expression.

Human consciousness ran through the entire body, from the tips of our toes to the crowns of our heads, circulating like blood. It was as if an inexhaustible will lived in the eyes that existed to see tomorrow, in the hands that took up a sword to protect someone, in the heart that didn't stop beating even after death.

"Bat's dead."

Then, I'd remembered one of our mortal enemies, and I told Scarlet about him.

Scarlet had been with Bat on the night I met him; he'd said their interests

had aligned. One thing led to another, and Bat had eventually sided with me and Saikawa instead of Scarlet. Achieving a long-cherished ambition, he'd finally fought Seed and had fallen in battle.

"I see," Scarlet murmured. He didn't seem to feel anything in particular about the news. "If you bring me a piece of him, I can revive him."

He probably wasn't trying to be a jerk. As a vampire, he was just making the suggestion as a matter of course.

"No, it's fine." I didn't even have to speak for the dead. I knew full well Bat would never want that. After all… "He already got his wish."

He didn't need to fight anymore. I wanted him to rest in peace.

"I see. I don't understand it myself, but no doubt that's a good thing." Scarlet gazed into the distance. The night wind toyed with his silver hair.

"There's one other thing I want to ask you," Siesta said. "Do you know what sort of deal Arsene struck with Seed long ago?"

That was the second issue we had on our hands right now: What had Arsene gotten from Seed in exchange for the sacred text? That might be the hint to solving the mystery behind this chain of incidents.

"Who knows? I haven't been to that wearisome council in ages, so I know nothing about that sort of thing." Scarlet shrugged, refusing to give us the answer we were looking for again. "Besides, the only things that interest me are my enemies."

Did he mean the world's enemies, as a Tuner? Or— "Scarlet, what are you fighting against?"

The vampire didn't answer. His golden eyes gazed at the faraway moon as if it dazzled him.

"Ah, but there was one thing I needed to tell you." Remembering something, Scarlet turned to look at us again. "While I have no way of knowing about the Phantom Thief, I can provide information about the deceased primordial seed. As a reward for defeating him, you see." His smile was as arrogant as ever. "When I negotiated with Seed, he asked if I would help him extinguish the sun."

That had probably been what Scarlet had mentioned earlier, the "united front" Seed had proposed. I'd asked him what sort of negotiations they'd had before, but he'd evaded the question that time, pretending not to hear.

"So that's what it was, huh?" Frankly, when we'd learned that Seed's weakness was the sun, I'd had an idea that that might have been it. Scarlet

was just as bad with sunlight as Seed was; that was why Seed had negotiated with him.

"Why did you turn him down, though? That was a pretty good offer for a vampire, wasn't it?"

"Yes. It was an entertaining suggestion, and I thought it would be amusing to go along with him. However…" Scarlet's gaze shifted from me to Siesta. "It would have meant my former bride candidate could no longer nap in the sunlight, and I took pity on her." His expression softened.

"…Well. If we're comparing the number of times we've seen Siesta's sleeping face, then I've—"

"Assistant, I don't see the point of competing with him on that." I wasn't competing. I was just stating facts.

Still, at this point we'd asked Scarlet everything we needed to. We probably wouldn't make any more progress regarding Natsunagi's consciousness or the Phantom Thief. On that thought, I signaled to Siesta that we should probably be going.

"There's no telling what the Phantom Thief may do. You be careful as well," Siesta told Scarlet as we turned to leave.

"You're very considerate toward your husband," the guy murmured, sounding satisfied.

Who's "Siesta's husband," huh? I'll kick your ass.

"But it's true that there has been suspicious movement lately." Scarlet's golden eyes narrowed. "About a month ago, I received the corpse of a certain man. The sender asked if I would purchase it for a million dollars."

It sounded almost like the organ trade—although the act of buying and selling human corpses was probably significant to a vampire who could raise the dead.

"So the corpse didn't belong to an ordinary human?" I asked, picking up on the direction of the conversation.

"Correct. I did not purchase it, but no doubt it was a fair price for the individual."

Then Scarlet told us about the dead man he'd seen a month ago. "It was the corpse of Fritz Stewart, the Revolutionary."