Chapter 5: A Message

The videotape neatly resolved Matsuo's murder. The next question facing Tea Immortal was the death of Miura Kazuya.

The body had been discovered on the evening of the twelfth, but the dismembered remains in the garbage bag raised a series of questions. First, the murder had certainly taken place elsewhere. The police had already confirmed that. Not far from the Ikeda home, they had found the weapon Takeshi had discarded: an ordinary kitchen knife bearing Miura's blood and Takeshi's fingerprints. Evidence at the scene indicated that the two had grappled there. Miura had fallen after being stabbed, and Takeshi had panicked, dropped the weapon, and fled.

Who, then, had dismembered the body? Tian Yi was a strong suspect, but Tea Immortal ruled out that possibility after some thought. Previous investigations had taught him that Tian Yi rarely left the bookshop. When he did, at least a few ability users had to die.

It was hard to imagine Tian Yi making the trip himself just to dispose of a body. Someone else had done the dismembering.

The possibility that Takeshi had returned to move the body himself was virtually zero. If he had possessed the nerve to come back and dispose of it, there would have been no reason to leave the weapon behind, much less kill himself out of fear of punishment just a few hours later.

There must, then, have been another person involved in this case. He had arrived soon after Takeshi killed Miura and fled, carried off the body, and made a cursory attempt to clean up the scene. Then he had cut the body into several pieces somewhere secluded and finally dumped it several kilometers away.

Yet after doing all that, this person had still left the weapon near the scene. There was only one explanation for such peculiar behavior.

Someone who could learn precisely when and where a murder had occurred, reach the scene as quickly as possible, and then do something that defied common sense... He must have been acting on Tian Yi's instructions.

But who exactly was this person who had dismembered the body...?

The three inverted-cross deaths handled by Hokkaido's Third Precinct were those of Sato Manami, a female university student who had slit her wrists beside a church's cross; Kindaichi Kosuke, a company employee whose fall from a building had initially been judged accidental; and Saionji Ichiro, a freelancer who had killed himself with poison. The sole lead connecting any of them to this case lay with Ichiro. His younger brother had been in the same year as Miura Kazuya, and both had belonged to the school's light music club. That was the only remaining link.

But all three had died before December 10. Even setting aside the fact that one was a woman, neither of the two men had a driver's license or a car. They simply lacked the means to transport and dispose of a body in such a short time.

As for the remaining players, there was only the mentally deranged Ikeda Nozomi. He was the most likely to have cleaned up after his father, but he had spent that afternoon at school. His alibi was extremely solid.

Could there be... another player they had yet to discover?

That would make this different from Tian Yi's previous cases. His games almost never left survivors. Or perhaps the undiscovered player was dead too, but his death had been passed off as natural, and the inverted cross on his face had gone unnoticed?

Tea Immortal's investigation reached a dead end. He began going through every recent case in the police files, looking for suspicious deaths: bodies that had been burned, disfigured, or never found at all. If the person was still alive, things would be even more complicated...

A month passed, and the investigation finally entered its closing stages. The players had all committed crimes to one degree or another, but these six were dead, having either killed one another or ended their own lives. Tea Immortal had pieced it all together. He knew how each person had died and how they were connected, but what of it? Just as in Tian Yi's previous cases, once he understood the whole story, he found there was no one to arrest and no one left to punish. Their crimes had already received their due.

The sole survivor, Ikeda Nozomi, had gone mad, and he had committed no crime anyway.

In the end, the only unanswered question still concerned the person who had never surfaced, the one Tian Yi had instructed to dismember the body.

Tea Immortal gradually began to wonder whether this person was a player at all... If he was Tian Yi's assistant rather than a player, a great deal would make sense. Since he had not been driven to act by “sin,” he must still be alive somewhere in the world. Finding him might lead to Tian Yi.

...

After going in circles, he still had to return to the beginning. Tea Immortal went back to the psychiatric hospital to see whether Ikeda Nozomi, who had been like a walking corpse a month earlier, could speak yet.

The orderly leading the way opened the door to the room for him. Tea Immortal stepped inside, motioned for the orderly to wait outside, and closed the door.

Ikeda was still sitting on the bed with vacant eyes. There was no sign of improvement since Tea Immortal's last visit.

Tea Immortal sighed. This would very likely be another wasted trip, but he tried calling to him anyway. “Ikeda-kun.”

To his surprise, the moment he said it, the other man moved. He raised his head and looked at Tea Immortal's face. “Unfortunately, the test has failed.”

The temperature around them seemed to plunge to freezing in an instant. Astonishment was written all over Tea Immortal's face. For a moment, he could scarcely believe what he was seeing and hearing. “What did you say...?”

“It's been a month. That exceeds the time the ‘Transmitter’ expected. I have no reason to stay here any longer.” With every word, Tea Immortal realized that everything he had known until now had been entirely under Tian Yi's control.

“Who are you?” Tea Immortal went on his guard. He knew the person before him was certainly not Ikeda Nozomi, an ordinary high school student.

The person sitting on the hospital bed gradually changed. Beneath his hospital clothes, his whole body turned pitch-black. It looked nothing like human skin; its texture was more like that of a black spacesuit. His head was black and hairless, his features sharply contoured, and his deep-set eyes shone with a blue-green light.

Darkwater's voice was cold, without a trace of emotion. “On the ‘Transmitter's’ instructions, I have two pieces of information to give you. The first concerns what happened on December 12.

“That morning, Ikeda Nozomi said ‘September fourth’ to Miura, prompting him to plan a murder. Meanwhile, Jingniao visited Takeshi to ask about the case. That afternoon, fearing the police would investigate Ikeda Nozomi, Takeshi went to the ‘Transmitter.’ There he learned that Miura intended to murder his son at a certain location. He went to stop him, and Miura was killed.

“Next, I arrived at the scene, tore the body apart and moved it, made a cursory attempt to clean up the bloodstains, and left the weapon behind. Later, after school, Ikeda Nozomi went to see the ‘Transmitter.’ Upon learning that his father had killed Miura, he went home and discovered that Takeshi had already killed himself out of fear of punishment. Unable to bear it, he lost his mind.”

Tea Immortal seemed far less interested in the details of the case than in Darkwater. He interrupted. “Are you Tian Yi's assistant...? When did you start working for him? Why was there no trace of you in the earlier cases? And what does ‘Transmitter’ mean?” He had thought he understood most of what had happened, only to discover that he still had far too many questions.

In fact, Tea Immortal's suspicions were all mistaken. In November, Darkwater had still been pitting his wits and strength against Gunsmith in the South American rainforest. Before that, while Tian Yi had been out stirring up trouble, Darkwater had been asleep in the underground ruins.

At noon on the twelfth, Gunsmith had come to the bookshop seeking Tian Yi's protection, then entered the bookshop's subspace. In the few hours between that and Takeshi's arrival, another uninvited guest had come to the door. It was Darkwater.

Darkwater could sense the Eternal Core's location no matter how far away it was, and so he had tracked Gunsmith all the way from South America. Having swallowed four HL experts in the jungle, he now had enough memories and knowledge to fit into civilized society without much difficulty. In Hokkaido, he had finally been on the verge of catching Gunsmith, only for Gunsmith to hide in Tian Yi's bookshop.

When Darkwater arrived, he unexpectedly met Tian Yi, the one he called the ‘Transmitter.’ To his people, the ‘Transmitter’ was a great being second only to the gods. He paid his respects, but Tian Yi merely “greeted” him with a peculiar expression. “So your kind hasn't died out yet...”

Tian Yi asked Darkwater a few questions and learned the broad outline of Gunsmith's experiences in South America. He told Darkwater there was no hurry to find that idiot. Killing him wouldn't fix the Eternal Core anyway, so he might as well let him keep tinkering in subspace. And so Tian Yi took Darkwater on as an underling without a qualm. A few hours later, when Takeshi killed Miura and fled, Tian Yi learned what had happened through the Book of the Heart and sent Darkwater to dispose of the body.

On the thirteenth, Tian Yi learned that HL had intervened. He changed his strategy and devised a new trap. Before killing Kuwabara and leaving Hokkaido, he gave Darkwater a task. He was to consume Ikeda Nozomi and take his form before Tea Immortal arrived. If Tea Immortal still hadn't solved the case after a month, he was certain to visit again. Then Darkwater was to drop the disguise and pass on two pieces of information.

Tea Immortal thought he understood Tian Yi well. In truth, Tian Yi knew him inside out. He knew exactly how Tea Immortal investigated a case, how he thought, how well he could work with clues and follow chains of deduction, and so on... Unless he had reached a dead end, Tea Immortal would never enter that psychiatric hospital a second time to seek help from a mental patient's testimony. One month was precisely how long Tian Yi, drawing on past experience, estimated it would take Tea Immortal to give up. A “clever man” wouldn't spend forever agonizing over something he couldn't solve.

Now Darkwater simply continued, as though he hadn't heard Tea Immortal's questions. “The second piece of information. The ‘Transmitter's’ exact words were...

“I had thought you were the fourth-cleverest person on this planet, but recently I've found a very interesting fellow who may surpass you. A new test is already being prepared.

“It's time you were eliminated, Tea Immortal. It's been years, after all, and you haven't shown the slightest sign of being able to catch me. Humans really do have their limits. And your dreadful taste disgusts me as well. All in all, this is your last chance.

“An age of turmoil and conflict is about to begin. It seems you aren't suited to stand beneath the banner of the inverted cross. You will never stand before me as an officer of the law again. When you finally get your wish and meet me, you will be facing no mere wanted criminal of danger level six, but the creator of a new world.”