Chapter 2.1

April 28 Siesta

"See? What did I tell you? Just wander around town and you'll run into that kid, up to his ears in some incident or other."

I'd visited this police station just two days before. In one of its hallways, Fuubi Kase was smiling at me triumphantly for some reason. "He didn't just get pulled in this time, he was actually involved."

About an hour earlier, a murder had occurred in a mixed-use building. The victim was a man in his forties who ran a consumer finance company; he'd been stabbed in the chest and had died from blood loss. I'd seen Boy K. at the scene, holding a knife that appeared to be the murder weapon, and had called it in. From the look of the situation, he clearly knew something.

However, no matter what I'd asked him, he didn't respond. The only thing he'd told me was his name. He'd stayed silent in the police car on the way to the police station, too. And now here we were… In an interview room near the hall where Fuubi and I were talking, Boy K. was being questioned as a suspect.

"But he's not fourteen yet, is he? Under the laws of Japan, youth offenders can't be punished. You can't even conduct a criminal investigation on them, correct?"

"Right, which is why this isn't an investigation. It's just an inquiry. We've contacted the children's welfare center. Nobody's going to care if we talk to him until they come pick him up." Fuubi leaned back against the wall.

"Does Boy K. have any family? Aside from Danny Bryant, I mean." "It's pretty late for that question, isn't it? You know he's on his own." It seems she found out I'd infiltrated city hall. Not that it mattered.

"Geez. Who's the spy here? Even I didn't recognize you for a minute." I was blending into the scene in my disguise as a police officer. Fuubi shot me a look, then sighed.

"Then while I'm here, let me handle Boy K.'s questioning, too. You're having trouble with him, aren't you?"

From what I'd heard, even in the interview room, he still wasn't talking.

"The detective should stay out of this until we've got a closed circle mystery

on our hands, don't you think?" Fuubi narrowed her eyes at me, clearly not happy with my suggestion.

"But I saw the crime scene up close."

"How am I supposed to explain it to the higher-ups?"

"Just get orders from above them." If the orders came from somebody who worked for the world itself, someone who vastly outranked a mere civil servant, then…

"As if those guys would lift a finger over a murder in this backwater." "Then you can grant permission."

"Kid, you've been treating me like a handyman lately." Fuubi scratched her head irritably, but then, she said, "…Finish up in fifteen." She used her intercom to contact somebody.

Had she left this to me, even though she griped about it, because she'd seen time and time again how much trouble Boy K. was? Or was it because she knew I never backed down at times like this? Either way, I was grateful. It was my belief that if detectives and the police teamed up, the world's mystery novels could cut their page counts in half.

A little while after that, I was ready. Still in my police officer disguise, I stepped into the interview room where Boy K. waited. "We meet again, kid."

The room was cold and spare; except for the table and chairs in its center, it was empty. Boy K. was sitting in one of the chairs. He glanced at me, then looked down at his hands again.

He'd been wearing a jacket at the crime scene, but he'd undergone a body search and was now in a plain T-shirt. Although he still looked young, he had a rather melancholic expression. I would describe him as more mature than resigned.

"There are surveillance cameras in here, so people can see us," I said as I took a seat across the table from the boy. He still wouldn't meet my eyes. "So you don't have to worry, I won't use force to interrogate you illegally, and the 'right to remain silent' you've been exercising is still guaranteed. You also have the right to legal representation; if you need it, I can make the arrangements." At that point, Boy K. finally looked my way. "I'm definitely not your ally, but I'm not your enemy, either. I'm… Oh, of course, I haven't introduced myself yet, have I?"

Since I was disguised as a police officer, I was hesitant to use my code name or bynames. Instead, I held out my fake police notebook. "My name is Gekka. Gekka Shirogane."

The name stemmed from my actual hair color, and on the gekka bijin, or "moonlight beauty," a white flower that only bloomed at night.

"And your name is—Kimihiko Kimizuka, correct? What should I call you?" As I tried to establish a connection, I narrowed my focus to winning his trust.

I kept watching him steadily, and the boy finally caved. "Kimizuka or Kimihiko. Call me whatever you want."

"Thank you. Okay then, kid…" "What, you're not using my name?"

That was a surprisingly snappy comeback. You'd never think he'd just killed a guy. Well, maybe he hadn't.

"Oh, I see. Did you want your big sister here to call you by your name?" My actual age might be one thing, but in terms of apparent age, I had ten years on him at the moment.

Boy K. looked away defiantly. "Don't treat me like a child. I'm an adult." "Only kids ever say that."

"If you round up a bit, I'm hundred and sixty centimeters tall."

"It's all right. At your age, boys have sudden growth spurts." At present, he was a little shorter than average. Just a little. "They've told me a bit about you. I hear you're always getting caught up in crazy incidents?"

"…It's how I'm wired. Thanks to that, nobody comes near me."

"It sounds like you're really popular with the police, though." As I said it, I was thinking of the redheaded policewoman's aggrieved face.

"You said you were Ms. Gekka? What are you trying to pull here?" Boy K. glared at me, as if he were sizing me up. "Are you starting with random chitchat to get me to lower my guard? Is that your plan? You're a good negotiator." He didn't sound amused.

"You're not cute, are you, kid?"

"Nobody wants the police to think they're cute."

Really? That fiend of a policewoman might be one thing, but being doted on by me seemed like it would be more of a reward than anything else.

"If you insist, then: Let's get down to business." Fuubi had given me fifteen minutes. I couldn't really afford to take my time anyway. "So? What were you doing in a place like that?"

The room where I'd found Boy K. holding that knife had been a loan shark's office. Normally, a kid his age wouldn't have any opportunity to visit a place like that. If Boy K. had actually committed a murder there, what had brought him to the office in the first place?

After I asked him about it, Boy K.'s eyes widened slightly, as if I'd surprised him somehow. Not by my question, though—I'd shown him a note, positioning it so that the surveillance camera couldn't see it.

I'd like you to answer the questions I write down, not the ones I ask aloud.

This message was written on the note.

I really did intend to solve this incident. However, my original goal, the real reason I'd been looking for Boy K., was something else. The boy pressed his lips together, carefully considering my intentions, and I stealthily showed him another note.

The boy's expression briefly changed. "…I dunno," he answered. He wasn't responding to my question of "what he'd been doing in a place like that." The second note had said, Do you know a man named Danny Bryant?

That was why I was sticking close to Boy K. If the children's welfare center took custody of him temporarily, I might lose this tenuous lead on Danny. A member of the Federation Government had entrusted me with this case, and she'd gone so far as to personally request it. Learning Danny Bryant's true identity would be highly significant for me as well.

"Did you stab that loan shark?"

I asked about the murder aloud, but my note read, Do you know where Danny is?

"..."

The boy didn't answer. However, from his earlier reaction, it was clear that he had some sort of connection to the man. I drew random strokes in my notepad, then held it out to the boy. "I've drawn a rough map of the crime scene, but there are a few things I can't remember about the layout. Can you fill those in?"

Now he could write down his answers to my real questions without arousing suspicion.

With a small sigh, the boy picked up the notepad. "Is this good enough?" I'd asked him where Danny Bryant was, and as his response, he'd written:

If you prove I'm innocent, I don't mind telling you where Danny's hiding.

"Sorry to keep you waiting. Let's continue on, shall we?"

I'd temporarily stepped out of the interrogation room, then returned to face Boy K. again.

"I figured evidence that proved my innocence had turned up and I'd been acquitted." The boy shrugged and accepted the fact that I'd resumed my seat.

Was he so composed because he wasn't nervous anymore, or was it because

he'd grown accustomed to these situations? Or—had that deal with me helped him decide where he stood? Whichever it was, it made it easier for me to work.

"I wanted to have our interview time extended a little. I stepped out to ask about that, and I've also had them temporarily shut off the surveillance cameras in here."

"I'm pretty sure you said something about how those cameras ensured my safety. You'd better not be planning to use a truth serum on me."

"Conversing in writing the whole time was going to be a pain, that's all.

Besides, when I get serious, I don't waste time with trivialities."

"You're saying you've got an attack that could do more than break my skull?" Boy K.'s face tensed up, and he pushed his chair back.

"It destroys human dignity."

"That's not something a cop should be saying…" I'm actually a detective, so it's not a problem.

"Still, now I can talk to you without worrying about anyone listening in."

What I needed to do now was prove Boy K.'s innocence, then get him to tell me where Danny Bryant was. It was simple enough.

The only thing I was concerned about was whether Boy K. was actually innocent. In terms of circumstantial evidence, he was the biggest suspect. I couldn't possibly bend the truth for the sake of my own objective.

I couldn't falsify the evidence so that it would work in our favor, and I couldn't file an insanity plea and have Boy K. declared not guilty. I had to prove he hadn't done it. That said, I couldn't rush this. I'd learned just recently that building a theory to fit a certain conclusion was about the dumbest move there was. Reining myself in, I took a different approach. "To start with, let's talk a little more about ourselves, shall we?"

The boy gave a thin smile. "Negotiating again?"

"I wouldn't go to so much trouble when you've already seen all my cards. It's just my policy. If I'm going to ask somebody to talk about themselves, I need to tell them something about myself as well."

Of course, that wasn't actually my policy. I wasn't even a cop. Right now, though, more than anything, I needed him to trust me.

"That's a weird thing to be so conscientious about," the boy said with a frankness I wasn't expecting. "Okay."

I told him a bit about where I'd been born and raised, what had made me decide to join the police force, and a few of the cases I'd been involved in previously. Naturally, most of what I said was a lie, but making all of it up

would have made it less believable.

…And so I mixed in a few truths. For example, some of the "previous cases I'd been in charge of" were incidents I'd actually solved as a detective. As I told the boy about those, I mentioned that Danny Bryant was suspected of a certain theft, which was why I was pursuing him. As a matter of fact, I'd heard from Fuubi that Danny might have committed a few petty crimes like that.

"I see. Well, there are probably a zillion reasons for the cops to be after that guy." Boy K. smiled wryly. Then he began to tell me about Danny's character. He told me that the man had shown up one day, claiming to be a relative, and had taken him in, but just kept wandering off and hadn't really looked after him. That when he came home every so often, his clothes were always torn up for some reason, but he'd still be smiling cheerfully. And how he often acted as a sort of Robin Hood, which meant he made enemies easily. That Danny Bryant had constantly made Boy K.'s life difficult. He gave specific examples along with his explanation, too.

"Well, as I said, it's not like I'm with him all the time. We're each doing our own thing right now," he explained.

"And you say that while you were doing your own thing, you got dragged into this incident?"

"Yeah. It was a coincidence. When I went to that office for, uh, reasons," the boy said, lamenting his misfortune with exaggerated gestures. If that was true, I had to clear up this incident for him as quickly as possible.

I shifted the conversation back to the main topic. "In that case, let me ask you again. You said 'for reasons'; can we go into the specifics there?" I asked again, thinking he might tell me the truth now that we were on the same page. "It's not the sort of place kids usually visit."

"I'm living on my own, so I need money. I didn't think the place was that sketchy," he replied.

Boy K. had said that Danny Bryant wasn't actively taking care of him. Did that mean he wasn't making sure he had money, either?

"Let's say I believe you. You went to that office to borrow money, and then what happened?"

"When I got there, that yakuza guy was already bleeding on the floor."

"I see. Well, an ordinary person probably wouldn't believe that." As expected, he was planning to keep pleading innocent.

Now that I was facing Boy K., even I was having a hard time imagining him as the killer. It was the number of times he blinked, the movements of his eyes,

the depth of his breathing; the sort of things I could see even without a polygraph.

What concerned me wasn't the question of whether he was lying or not, but the fact that Boy K. seemed to be gazing into the distance. It was as if he felt his battlefield was somewhere else.

"Then what about that knife you had?"

Even so, our objectives really had lined up. I searched the conversation for evidence that would prove Boy K.'s innocence.

"It was on the floor to begin with. I guessed it might be the murder weapon and picked it up without thinking; that's when you saw me."

"It doesn't really get worse than that, does it?"

Was this the power of Boy K.'s knack for getting dragged into things?

To summarize his story, he'd visited the consumer loan office to borrow money, discovered a yakuza member covered in blood, and carelessly picked up the knife used in the attack when I'd walked in and saw him.

It sounded like an improbably convenient testimony. He was the person in question, of course, so that was only to be expected. All that really mattered was objective proof.

Unfortunately, the office's security camera had been destroyed. That had to have been the work of the criminal. Either way, nothing that proved Boy K.'s innocence had been found yet.

"So you think the true culprit, the murderer, was somebody else."

"Yeah, somebody who stopped by before I did. Not that I can prove it," the boy said, laughing at himself. There were no security cameras near the alley where the building was located, and we hadn't yet figured out the foot traffic in that area.

At the moment, the police probably assumed the situation was something like this: Boy K., who was living in poverty, had unwisely gotten involved with a loan shark. Trouble had broken out at the office, and he'd killed his creditor. If Boy K. really was innocent, how were we going to turn this around?

"I'm used to being a suspect, though." The boy looked away, smiling a little. He seemed to have accepted his fate as inevitable, so I hesitated to compliment his courage.

"It's all right. Fortunately, I hear they've found multiple footprints at the crime scene. They haven't decided that you're the one who did it…"

Just then, Fuubi Kase contacted me on my intercom. The forensic results for the fingerprints on the murder weapon had come back. I listened intently.

"I see. All right, kid, we've got new information." I shared what I'd learned from Fuubi: "The only fingerprints on the knife used in the murder were yours."

"I see. I'm the perpetrator, then, huh." "You certainly are."

We exchanged wry smiles.

It was too soon to give up, though. The real criminal might have worn gloves. "You believe me?"

"I don't believe people." There were plenty of things more worthy of belief than people. "I want to know where Danny Bryant is. That means if you're not innocent, I'll have a problem on my hands."

"What if I actually am the murderer?" Boy K. asked without turning a hair.

True, I'd have to keep that possibility in mind as well. What if he was lying to me, made everything worse, and didn't even give me any information about Danny?

"Right. If so, rest assured you'll lose your dignity as a human being for all eternity." I smiled at him as calmly as possible, so he wouldn't be scared of me.

"…Seriously, Ms. Gekka, who are you?"

A detective, just a detective.

Not that I'm telling you that yet.

"That said, the fact of the matter is that this just seems weird. Could a kid really stab a yakuza member to death? I suspect there's someone else behind this."

The truth was still eluding me. But if I gathered a bit more information, or maybe revisited the crime scene armed with the facts I'd learned, I should be able to uncover something new there.

"Don't worry. I'm sure you'll be home in time for dinner."

Boy K.'s only response was a subdued "Yeah." He was gazing into the distance.

After that, having determined that I wouldn't be able to get anything else out of Boy K. at this point, I went to take a look at the evidence that had been collected from the crime scene.

In addition to the knife believed to be the murder weapon, there was a list of debtors and other related documents, the victim's cell phone, and the office computer. I set to work analyzing all of them. As usual, Fuubi grumbled, but I pointed out—again—that I'd taken over the search for Danny. She must have felt a little indebted to me, because she grudgingly gave her consent.

Before I knew it, while I was analyzing the new data I'd gleaned from the evidence, the sun had set. Even then, I still had a lot left to do. By the time I went to see Boy K., who'd been moved to the children's welfare center, it was quite late.

When I reached the center, I headed for the room where they were keeping him. I used my master key to unlock the door, and there was Boy K., lying on his side with his face to the wall.

"Good morning, kid," I whispered, putting my lips close to his ear.

"—! You scared me…" He bolted up after I'd startled him; maybe he'd been asleep.

"Do you have sensitive ears?"

"You wanna show me a person who doesn't?"

I don't. At the very least, having somebody blow into my ears doesn't faze me. …Although I doubt I'll have the opportunity to prove it.

"I'm sorry I'm so late. It's past dinnertime, isn't it?"

It had taken me longer than I thought to weigh the evidence, and I'd ended up breaking my promise.

"What time is it?" Flustered, the boy reached for his pocket, then realized they'd confiscated his smartphone.

"It's past eleven."

I wanted to let him have breakfast at his apartment tomorrow morning, at least. Come to think of it, I wondered if that bread was still good.

"…I see. Eleven." Boy K. wiped the sweat off his forehead and sighed. "So what do you need? From your face, I'm guessing my innocence hasn't been proven yet."

"It hasn't. I do think incidents should be solved at the scene of the crime, though. And so…"

"…What?" The boy cocked his head, mystified.

I extended my left hand to him. "Let's sneak out of here together." With that, we ran away from the children's welfare center.

Fuubi Kase had nothing to do with this, of course. It was entirely my own decision.

"If she finds out, she might actually kill me this time. She's merciless." Remembering the battles I'd once fought with the Assassin, I pedaled faster.

Racing through the dark streets on a bicycle made me feel like I was wrapped in stars and the wind. It wasn't bad.

"Don't you usually use police cars for this sort of thing?" Boy K. whined from

behind me. Unfortunately, I wasn't old enough to drive yet. Not that he knew that.

Well, I would if I had to. I'd like to learn how to drive a tank one of these days, just in case. You can never be too prepared. Especially when you're a detective.

"My first time riding double with somebody, and it's a cop. This sucks." Boy

had simultaneously mocked himself and insulted me.

The kid might look resigned to his fate at all times, but he was cheeky. "It's a good life experience, isn't it? It depends on how you look at it."

"And every way I look at this, it's bad. One classic teenage rite of passage, down the drain."

"I'm surprised you're interested in stuff like this. Your expression always looks so dead."

"Mind your own business. Just because you're all dried up, that doesn't mean other people— Whoa!"

I slammed on the brakes, and Boy K. hastily threw his arms around my waist, hanging on.

"Oh, sorry. A cat ran out in front of us. I couldn't help it."

"…! Ms. Gekka, maybe you don't look like it, but you're a little brat on the inside, aren't you?"

"An excellent question," I demurred, and we hurried to the scene of the crime.

About twenty minutes later…

"Okay, go on in. Just try not to leave fingerprints, and don't move things."

When we reached the mixed-use building, we crossed the police tape, then stepped into the consumer loan office where the incident had happened.

Wearing gloves, I flipped on the light switch. No one was there. The corpse had been taken away, of course, and nobody was around except Boy K. and me.

"And? Why bring me here?" The kid stayed near the door, without venturing any farther into the room. An unsurprising decision at the scene of a murder.

"I thought you might notice something new if you took another look at the crime scene. Come here." When I beckoned him, the boy steeled himself and came in. "The stars are very clear tonight, aren't they?" I said, looking at them through the big window.

"Is that a new pickup line?"

"Unfortunately, I'm only interested in older men." Wait, this isn't the conversation we should be having. "That curtain was open, wasn't it?"

The boy looked a little perplexed, as if he wasn't sure what I was getting at.

"When I first came here this afternoon, that curtain was open. If this murder was premeditated, that would have been really careless of the murderer, don't you think?"

"…Oh, actually, yeah. Normally you'd close the curtains so people wouldn't see."

"Right. So I think this was a crime of passion."

As a matter of fact, a staff member from this office was actually a witness: the man with the shaved head who'd almost run into me. The killer had been careless. I couldn't believe they'd had the murder planned out from the beginning.

"Yeah, but it's not like every murderer in the world tries to commit the perfect crime. Maybe whoever it was had an intense grudge against the victim and wanted to kill him so badly he didn't care whether people found out. The guy who got killed would've had a lot of enemies," Boy K. said.

Yes, in his line of work, he'd probably had a lot of people out for his blood. "Still, the suspect is on the run. That means they didn't want their crime to be

discovered."

That would still have been true even if Boy K. had been responsible, since he was denying the crime. Either way, our culprit wanted to run from the murder they'd spontaneously committed.

"I see. I guess the security camera was broken, huh." "Right. And the fingerprints were wiped off the weapon."

"If we assume the criminal isn't me, anyway," the boy said, shrugging.

We weren't "assuming" anymore, though. I was sure that whoever had erased the proof was the true culprit.

"This was a place of business, no matter how unscrupulous it was. As such, I thought they'd have a list of scheduled visits. I checked into it."

"…! The computer, huh?" Boy K. snapped his fingers, as if it suddenly made sense.

"Good job remembering that. It isn't even here now." "…Yeah. They probably took it in as evidence."

Should I compliment him on his familiarity with incidents like this?

"So what did you find? Was anybody besides me scheduled to visit today?" "I looked at the schedule, but unfortunately, there weren't any appointments."

When I told him the other days had been full, Boy K. looked away. "Bad luck," he said regretfully.

"In exchange, though, I got this." I took certain documents out of the bag I'd

brought along. "They're written debt acknowledgments from the borrowers. The due dates are on here as well. If one of these matched up, I thought we might have a likely suspect, but…"

"But there was nobody suspicious there, either, huh?" The kid finished my sentence for me.

"Right. Not in the office's physical files." From the boy's reaction, he hadn't been expecting that. "The borrowers' data was on the computer as well. Technically, part of it had been deleted—but I recovered it."

Boy K. listened to me in silence.

"I noticed data seemed to be missing from several places, including the scheduling tool. It took time, but when I restored the deleted data, a certain borrower came up. Not only that, but strangely, his was the only name not on the debtor list in the office."

It almost seemed like an attempt to let that borrower slip away from the crime scene. I didn't know whether he'd been the one who'd destroyed the evidence or whether he'd had help.

"Then you think the borrower who disappeared is the culprit?" Boy K. looked away; his expression was grim.

"I thought there was a good possibility. I called the phone number that was in the recovered data, but naturally, no one answered. However…" The boy looked at me. "As a matter of fact, you've already been released, kid. In exchange, a warrant's been issued for that borrower."

"…! Is there any definite proof?" Boy K. took a step closer to me; he seemed anxious.

"You're asking me that? You're finally being cleared of a false charge." "..."

"Is there a reason you don't want him to be caught?" "..."

If someone was protecting the borrower who was considered the real culprit… If that someone was this boy, Kimihiko Kimizuka…

Then who was he trying to protect? "—Hey, what are you two doing?"

Just then, a frustrated-sounding voice echoed through the crime scene. Our escape had been discovered.

"I'm sorry. I wanted to do a little nighttime cycling."

Fuubi Kase had come running with several police officers. I gave her an exaggerated wink, but it seemed to rub her the wrong way. "First you shove

work onto people, then you pull selfish crap like this…" She shot me a murderous look.

"I didn't force it onto you. I'm relying on you." "Ha! You always were a glib talker if nothing else." How rude. My sniping skills are pretty decent, too. "Let's cut to the chase, then."

Now it was time to solve the case. There were two of us, a detective and a police officer, so we'd wrap this up twice as fast.

"Let's clear this up, starting with the false charge on this kid," I said.

Fuubi returned my look wordlessly, agreeing to let me have the floor for now. Boy K. also stayed where he was. He watched me steadily, waiting to see what I'd do.

"First, let me preface this by saying I never thought the boy committed the murder in the first place. He had no motive for doing something that outrageous."

In the interview room, Boy K. had said something like "I visited that place for the first time." From what I'd seen of the loan office's list of customers, he'd been telling the truth. Coming up with a reason for a middle-school boy to kill a yakuza member he'd just met was nearly impossible.

"We've got material evidence, though." Fuubi interrupted earlier than I'd thought she would. She probably meant the fingerprints on the knife. "You can't just rely on motives. There's no telling what any human is thinking anyway. Objective evidence is the only thing you can trust," she said, glaring at Boy K.

"Ms. Fuubi, I figured you'd still be suspecting me."

"Ha! See, I never trusted you in the first place. The issue's more basic than whether I suspect you or not."

Boy K. and Fuubi exchanged glares.

"I sure miss that laidback police station chief."

"Now that he doesn't have to deal with you anymore, I bet he's kicking back and playing Go on the veranda with his grandkids."

…If I let these two get started, they'd probably keep fighting forever. I got us back on topic. "Yes, the forensic results showed the kid's fingerprints are on the knife." When I spoke again, both the boy and Fuubi looked my way. "That doesn't prove he actually committed the murder."

Fuubi was a police officer; she had to know this already.

"I saw the aftermath of the crime up close, and there wasn't a drop of blood on the boy's skin or clothes. It's impossible to believe that he'd just stabbed

somebody."

When he'd stood there holding the knife, his profile had seemed melancholy and resigned. However, for some reason—he'd struck me as beautiful.

Well, that was just my subjective impression, but still. If he'd stabbed someone, it was very unlikely that he wouldn't have any blood on him. Therefore, as Boy K. had said, it seemed probable that he'd just picked up the murder weapon and had gotten his fingerprints on it then.

"And one more thing. The kid is just a little too short to have killed the victim."

Boy K. was about a hundred and sixty centimeters tall. The victim had been a big man, over a hundred and ninety centimeters, but he'd been stabbed in the chest.

Of course, even with a thirty-centimeter height difference, it wouldn't have been impossible for the boy's hand to reach the victim's chest. If he'd held the knife in a reverse grip and raised his arm high, then brought it down, even he could have performed the stabbing without trouble.

However, from examining the stab wound, we knew that the knife had been held nearly horizontally. If a hundred-and-sixty-centimeter-tall boy had stabbed someone who was thirty centimeters taller than him, it wouldn't have left the wound it did.

"So if I hadn't gone and touched the knife, I never even would have been a suspect?" The boy laughed at himself. "It's like I'm cursed. I get dragged into crap like this every time."

"Yes, I couldn't agree more," I said, sincerely sympathizing with the boy's remark. "Because of your predisposition, you keep encountering situations like this one. However, just this once, you were truly careless."

The boy watched me silently.

"You're used to this sort of incident. They really should be routine for you.

And yet you picked up that knife. Why?"

He had to have known that touching the weapon would make him a suspect. Boy K. should have understood that better than anyone… "You knew this would happen all along. You picked up the knife on purpose, didn't you?" In doing so, he had the police focus their attention on him as the prime suspect. He'd had all of us in the palm of his hand.

"Why would I do that?" Boy K. cocked his head and smiled, but it wasn't real. "In order to protect someone."

Someone. The real killer.

Boy K. had kept insisting he was innocent, and yet he'd intentionally done something that would make him a suspect.

"Someone? Who would that even be? I'm always alone. You know that."

Indeed, we had talked about that at the station. Boy K. had no friends. I'd done some independent investigation, and from what I'd found, he had neither parents nor siblings. That meant there was no one who he would risk his life for. —Was there?

"Gekka," he said, dropping the "Ms." "You're saying the person who visited the office before I did is the criminal, right? Then what are they to me? Are they a friend who's so close I'd take a murder rap for them? Are they family? Or—"

I made eye contact with Fuubi. From here on out, this was her job. "No. The real perpetrator is a total stranger to you."

Oh. Really?

I hadn't known that until she said it. I'd thought the other possibility had a higher chance, but maybe the truth tends to work that way.

"The suspect's a man in his forties who ran up a big debt with this office. His name is—"

Fuubi gave a name that matched one of the people on the list of customers.

The name was the one I'd expected, at least.

"A minute ago, he called and confessed to the crime. His loan was due today, but he hadn't been able to get the money together. He'd gone to the office to ask them to wait, and negotiations broke down. The victim pulled a knife on him as a threat, they struggled, and we all know how that ended up. Whether or not they accept it as legitimate self-defense depends on how good his lawyer is." Fuubi sighed.

As incidents went, it was a really common one. The odd part was what came next.

"Then right after the incident, you happened to stop by the scene. For some reason, you took responsibility for the crime, and the suspect fled."

In other words, Boy K. had taken the fall for a murder committed by a stranger he'd just met.

"I took on a crime for some guy I don't even know? What would I get out of that?" The boy sounded shocked. It was a perfectly natural question.

But right after that…

"Still, I guess my job's over now." Boy K.'s expression softened just a little;

he seemed relieved. It was as if he felt there was no point in resisting any longer. Either that, or he'd already done what he'd set out to do. "Yeah, it's just like you said. I was covering for the real criminal."

"Why? You had nothing to do with this."

Now it was my turn to ask questions. If the person Boy K. was protecting had been the man I was pursuing, I would have understood his actions. This time, though, it had been the other possibility.

"When I ran into the culprit here, he told me something. He seemed to be panicking." The boy started to speak, quietly. "He said his daughter was having surgery soon. She had a severe illness, and this was a major surgery that would determine whether she'll live or die. If he got caught, he might never see her again—so he begged me to let him go, just for today, so he could see his daughter. That's why I pretended I was the criminal for a day," Boy K. said. He looked out the window at the night sky.

"I see. So you wanted to give him one last day with his daughter…" It made sense. All the pieces fell into place.

Although he'd been trying to protect the criminal, several footprints had been left at the scene, the computer's data hadn't been completely erased, and the issue involving the height difference hadn't been resolved. I'd chalked all those things up to Boy K.'s inexperience.

At the same time, I'd thought maybe that was inevitable. No ordinary middle schooler could completely destroy evidence that easily.

But I'd been wrong. He'd left patchy evidence simply because he'd only had to play this role for a day. He hadn't left any proof that would truly implicate him; he'd stuck to being a twenty-four-hour-long scapegoat.

Wow. He's even smarter than I imagined. That had to be a byproduct of the experiences his predisposition had put him through.

"If the criminal confessed, though, then he already saw his daughter. That means my job is done."

The boy wasn't smiling. He only looked a little tired, as if the fact that he'd finished helping someone was sinking in.

I'll say it again: He was clever. Really clever. At the same time, I had to admit he was naive.

"Even if it was just for a day, why take such a huge risk?"

The boy had made this sacrifice in an attempt to grant someone's wish, but had he gained anything worth the dangers?

"This guy told me before—he said to at least help the people in front of me."

"The only people who can say things like that are the ones with enough resolution and strength to save anyone. That isn't you."

"—Except I did pull it off this time. But, yeah, helping a criminal avoid arrest is a crime. I'll take the rap for that one."

"Did you really think that was the right thing to do? Overlooking a crime?

Really?"

"…I don't know. I think that's probably why I picked up that knife before I realized what I was doing: because I didn't know the answer."

A father had saddled himself with debt, committed a crime, and had wanted to see his daughter one more time—the boy didn't have a family, so he didn't understand why. He told us so, as if he were talking to himself.

"Yeah, you really are a damn brat." Fuubi glared at the boy. Her eyes were full of disgust—cold as ice, really. "Here, I'll tell you that answer: There never was any surgery."

"…!" The kid's eyes widened. "That's…not even… He didn't look like he was lying…"

"The killer probably wasn't the one who lied. Isn't that right?" I looked at Fuubi.

She nodded. "The liar was the yakuza who got bumped off. He said he'd use his connections to hook the guy up with a doctor who'd take on his daughter's tough surgery; then he gave him a high-interest loan, telling him it was his fee for the introduction. Except he never had any connections, and the scheduled surgery was a fake."

Fuubi's investigations had uncovered the truth, and her lips were pressed together in a thin line, her face expressionless. There was no outward change from her usual demeanor, but she was definitely furious on the inside. That was the impression I got, anyway.

"He told a lie like that, just to swindle him out of money…?" That seemed to shock the boy; he bit his lip hard.

The criminal had probably also learned everything immediately before the incident, which was why he'd finally turned himself in.

"Listen, kid…"

What should I say at a time like this? Comforting someone wasn't part of a detective's job. I knew that. But even so.

"You can't look for the answers you want in other people." Those words weren't based in anything I'd been thinking. They'd just left my mouth before I knew them. "If you want an answer, you have to find it on your own."

I was sure that was true for me as well. I was speaking both to the boy and to myself.

I was missing some memories. I had an enemy I needed to defeat. There were things I had to reclaim. And so I…

"It's all right. Leave it to me." When he heard that, the boy finally looked up. "I know where to find a skilled doctor. He'll save the life of the girl you and the culprit were trying to protect."

"…Really?"

Yes, because he was born to save others.

And so, for now…

"Just relax and impose on the officer here for a while."

Boy K. seemed like I caught him off guard. Then he gave a little laugh, acknowledging his defeat.