Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 3 Chapter 4 Part 3
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Chapter 4 Part 3
Hey, you found me here, meow
After that, Fukuzawa met with the other performers and asked the same questions. There was a total of twelve actors who were going to be in the show: seven women and five men including the lead, Murakami.
Given the theater’s large size, it seemed fair to assume that each actor would have their own dressing room, but apparently, Murakami was the exception. The others had all gathered in one big dressing room where they checked their costumes, practiced their lines, and swung around small props like swords. Fukuzawa heard that Murakami was going to have around half the stage time to himself.
“He’s actually a really popular actor,” commented an actress. “This is basically a one-man show. He’s got way more lines than the rest of us, and he even has a fight scene,” she claimed as she checked her makeup. “He had a lot of meetings alone with Kurahashi, the playwright. He seems to have really put a lot of stock in it. I even heard that someone saw him yelling at the stage carpenter.”
Fukuzawa asked another actor about the events.
How do you find me I wonder, m eow
I'm here for you meo w
“Nobody actually believes someone is really going to get murdered,” answered a slightly older actor while he looked at the program. “We work in entertainment, after all. Jealousy is far from unheard of. There are even fanatics who worship the troupe. We don’t have time to worry about every single threat. Granted, I only have a side part, so there would be no value in killing me. If anyone in the cast is gonna get death threats, it’s Murakami. He has a ton of groupies, followers, that sort of thing.”
The actor smiled, but another actress knitted her eyebrows.
“A threat?” She wore a large silver wig and was fixing her makeup. “Honestly, I’m sure everyone knows where the death threat came from.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know…” The actress winked. “It’s a small industry, yeah? People get together… They break up… Maybe someone banged one of the new girls, or they broke up and she quit. Who doesn’t have one or two people on their hit list?”
“Do you?” Fukuzawa asked her, but she just giggled and evaded the question.
Hopefully, this was nothing more than a crime of passion, and the threat was just made to scare someone. Fukuzawa thought back to the assassin killing the secretary this morning.
What if the one who made the death threat was an assassin of that caliber? Fukuzawa wasn’t confident he could protect everyone: the spectators, the performers, Ranpo, and himself.
He retired from the dressing room after hearing what everyone had to say. As he walked down the hallway, he thought.
I could handle fighting one-on-one even if the assassin were a skill user, but no matter how skilled the bodyguard, there are only so many people that can be protected at once.
If Fukuzawa were the assassin, then four police officers wouldn’t change anything. He could break through, take advantage of the commotion, and kill the target with no problem at all. But Fukuzawa was there to protect, and if he wanted to create a safe space with an ironclad defense for everyone in the theater, he was going to need ten men. This was an obstacle Fukuzawa naturally encountered as a bodyguard. No matter how talented of a martial artist he was, the enemy would break through the holes in the defense. He was only one man. He couldn’t protect the lives of every good person with just one body. Evil, on the other hand, would need only one body to pick a place, find an opening, and attack. All they would need was enough power and one moment to unleash it at maximum efficiency.
There was an imbalance between the power needed to protect and the power needed to attack. The only way to protect oneself from incredible skill and power was to have skill and power of your own, but unfortunately, the scales strongly favored one side. Therefore, something other than brute force was needed to make up for it.
“Whatcha thinking about, old guy? I’m getting hungry, just to let you know.” The boy by Fukuzawa’s side suddenly spoke up in a lackadaisical tone.
Just then, Fukuzawa was hit with an epiphany.
please come again, me ow
Hey, you found me here, meow
Who was it who found the company president’s real killer this morning? Who was it who uncovered Ms. Egawa’s secrets during their first encounter?
“Hey, kid. Has anything jumped out at you since you’ve been here?”
There was no denying this boy had something extraordinary. Fukuzawa wasn’t sure exactly what, but perhaps it was something that could compensate for the difference in necessary force between attacking and defending.
Ranpo simply stared at Fukuzawa, eyes fixated on him. He could see something.
What’s he looking at?
“Nothing’s really stood out to me. It’s just confusing. That’s all.” Ranpo tilted his head in a bored manner.
Fukuzawa stopped in his tracks. He was standing in the theater’s entrance lobby. There was a long line with people already entering the building for the show.
“I see.” Fukuzawa sighed. Nothing had caught his attention?
Fukuzawa had been inadvertently depending on Ranpo for an answer. Looking back, that was probably why he brought him along to talk to the performers, despite knowing the negative consequences. Perhaps he’d even brought Ranpo to the theater just to witness his talents. It was a rather pathetic thing to do for someone who was initiated in the Sankyo school of ancient Japanese martial arts.
“Sigh… Nothing matters anymore. Looks like I lost my chance at getting a job here. Plus, it’s not like I could work somewhere you have to be punctual, too. That’s boring.” Ranpo idly kicked at the lobby’s floor, but a long-haired mahogany rug covered the area close to the entrance where they were, so it didn’t make much of a sound. “Besides, someone’s about to die, so this theater’s gonna go out of business.”
A few passersby looked back, startled, and a chill ran down Fukuzawa’s spine. It was far too dark for a child’s joke. An adult should have reprimanded him, but Fukuzawa didn’t even move a muscle. It wasn’t Ranpo’s bad manners that unnerved Fukuzawa.
“After all, you’re the one who killed her, Mr. Secretary.”
Ranpo’s tone was exactly the same as it was then. Fukuzawa looked at Ranpo. He behaved as if nothing were out of the ordinary as he curiously looked back at Fukuzawa.
“Am I wrong?”
“…Nobody is going to die,” Fukuzawa finally replied. “That’s why I’m here. Neither the police nor the performers believe this threat is real. The reason why someone threatened the troupe wasn’t important.”
“It isn’t a threat.” Ranpo wore a displeased expression. “It was an announcement. A threat is when you say, ‘Stop doing this, or I’ll do that,’ right? You get two choices with threats. But this just said they were going to kill the performers. This was an announcement—a declaration, even. That’s why the criminal is going to be here and kill someone. They aren’t seeking anything from the troupe because all they want is for their target to die.”
Fukuzawa groaned.
Ranpo was completely right. The criminal’s objective was extremely ambiguous. Any ordinary threat would have clarified the criminal’s principles. Stop the play. Apologize. There would have been some sort of demand. But the threat this time, what Ranpo referred to as a declaration, didn’t have that.
“An angel shall bring death, in the truest sense of the word, to the performer. —V.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” asked Fukuzawa.
How do you find me I wonder, m eow
I'm here for you meo w
“What good would that have done?” Ranpo replied as if he was offended. “You’re all adults. Do something about it yourself. What good is asking a kid what he thinks is going to happen? Besides, everyone gets mad when I state the truth.”
Was he talking about everything that had happened to him since he came to Yokohama? There was darkness in his eyes.
“Seriously, adults don’t make any sense to me.” Pouting, Ranpo started kicking the rug he was standing on with the ball of his foot. “If a kid like me was able to figure it out, then surely you and the police already noticed a long time ago, right? My mother never got tired of telling me, ‘You’re still just a kid.’ And I agree with her. I really don’t understand what adults are thinking. Sometimes I even doubt they know anything, but that’s not even possible.”
“You’re still just a kid.” Of course you don’t understand adults. Because adults are smarter than you.
Is that what she meant? It’s not hard to understand why Ranpo’s parents drilled that into his head, at least to a certain degree, and yet…
“So you think adults also pick up on things you notice?” “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
Fukuzawa’s head was spinning.
It was then he realized he was facing something bigger than ever before.
He was overwhelmed by the sheer size.
This kid didn’t know anything. He had no idea that most people have no idea what’s going on.
He was like this ever since they first met. He accused the secretary of murder and saw right through Ms. Egawa. Even now, his eyes saw far more than any adult, Fukuzawa included. However, Ranpo still hadn’t realized that what he saw was only visible to him and him alone. He was still immature in that sense.
Only after growing do people learn that others are different—that people may be looking at the same things but perceive them differently. In fact, even some people well into their adulthood often forget that. They assume everyone thinks the same as they do, which often leads to conflict. That was what it meant to be human. Ranpo, still naive, may have fallen into that trap, but he did not deserve to be blamed. Nevertheless, Ranpo was an extreme case. Although he possessed such extraordinary powers of observation, he didn’t think he was special.
Why? Was it his parents’ fault? Was it because he lived a sheltered life with parents who had minds that rivaled his?
Fukuzawa could no longer ignore that itchy feeling. It was curiosity. He wanted to know just how talented this kid was.
“Hey, kid. What do you know about me?”
“Huh?” Ranpo made a strange face. “What do you mean? We just met, old guy. I don’t know a thing about you.”
“Anything’s fine,” assured Fukuzawa. “Just tell me what you know or what you noticed. If you exceed my expectations, I’ll help you find your next job after this. How’s that sound?”
“Uh…? Adults really like making deals, don’t they?” Ranpo reluctantly nodded. “Fine. But seriously, we just met, so I’m gonna know way less about you than most people, okay?”
Ranpo was probably the only one who thought that. “Just give it a try.”
“Hmm…” Ranpo crossed his arms before continuing. “You’re in your early thirties. A bodyguard. You’re a master of the martial arts; after all, you threw down an assassin like it was nothing. You’re single. You work alone. Right-handed. When you sat down at the café, you unconsciously made sure to sit with the wall to your right, so you used to practice swordsmanship as well. After all, if the wall was on the left side, you wouldn’t be able to swiftly draw your sword if something happened. You sat where the entrance was visible, which shows me you’ve seen your fair share of carnage in your lifetime. The reason why you barely make any noise even while walking on the hard theater floors is that you’ve trained for street and indoor combat. And the reason why you started to walk with one eye closed a little before we went through the unlit service entrance was so that you could immediately see your surroundings the moment you stepped into the darkness. In other words, you’re trained for ambushes in dark places.”
Fukuzawa could feel his body gradually get colder. He slowly lost the feeling in his toes. His throat dried and tensed up as his palms began to sweat.
“You have a good reputation as a bodyguard, but you haven’t been in the business long. A bodyguard’s job is to protect people, so you wouldn’t need to sneak around in the dark without making a sound. You quit your previous job, but you weren’t working in the shadows to kill people for money like that hit man from earlier. You made that clear when you didn’t show any real emotion when you talked about assassins. Plus, you didn’t seem to be on your guard when you talked to the police. That’s why your previous job wasn’t some sort of illicit, shadowy gig. But you don’t use a sword anymore, despite it being your area of expertise, and that’s because you did something you’re ashamed of at your last job.”
Fukuzawa felt an intense pain in his chest. His throat was so dry he could scarcely breathe. Everything was flickering red and black.
“But what kind of job where you use your sword to ambush people would be both lawful and shameful? Come to think of it, a few years ago there was a lot of dispute over the cease-fire agreement. Some war hawk bureaucrats were advocating for maintaining and expanding the front line. But one by one, they were found dead along with the leaders of the foreign military parties who backed them up. I noticed you grimaced at the newspaper stand when you saw the follow-up article on it, which makes me wonder—”
“Shut up!”
Fukuzawa exploded. As if his spirit were physically gushing into the room, the glass shook, the lights clicked, and a theater employee walking in the distance let out a slight yelp. Martial arts masters employed a similar phenomenon when they attacked with their chi. Being right next to him, Ranpo took the brunt of Fukuzawa’s unconscious yet fiery attack. After being pushed back a few steps, Ranpo fell on his rear as he if had been hit with a large invisible mallet. He blinked, still sitting, with a perplexed expression. The master class–level chi energy attack had knocked him unconscious for a second. Fukuzawa suddenly returned to his senses, albeit startled.
please come again, me ow
Hey, you found me here, meow
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