Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 3 Chapter 4 Part 4

Chapter 4 Part 4

“Sorry… You all right?” He approached Ranpo and helped him up. “Buh…?”
Ranpo was still idly blinking. Fukuzawa was overcome with a sense of shame. It was inexcusable for a martial arts master to use what could be considered condensed bloodlust on an ordinary person. It was evidence of just how disturbed Fukuzawa was. He never thought he would be this upset. It was something he had already come to terms with; it was a past he had already cut ties with. The only ones who knew the truth were his past comrades.

It wasn’t an act of evil. The mayhem probably would have gone on without Fukuzawa’s blade, thus leading to thousands of more victims. But it was a shady job that must never see the light of day. Everyone involved in Fukuzawa’s work was a high-ranking government official, but he hadn’t contacted them since then. Every one of them had kept their mouth shut about the incident, and Fukuzawa had planned to take this secret to the grave. And yet, a boy he had just met saw right through him—very easily at that.
“Don’t…talk about that,” Fukuzawa finally managed to say. “I get it now. You’re the real thing.”
No secrets were safe in Ranpo’s presence, but he had no idea he was special, which was exactly why this wasn’t the time to be getting worked up. There had to be a way to get Ranpo to recognize his abilities; Fukuzawa would need to think of something.
Just then, a bell rang over the intercom, signaling that the performance was to start in five minutes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, the show is about to begin. Please come inside,” said the worker in front of the door.
“Come on.”
Fukuzawa grabbed Ranpo, whose eyes were still glazed over, and headed toward the door to the auditorium.
He would have Ranpo observe the stage. The boy might be able to figure something out that way.
Thoughts raced through Fukuzawa’s jumbled mind. He still felt on edge. Having his secret known startled him, and he was taken aback by Ranpo’s powers of observation. But was that it? It was as if something else lurked in the depths of Fukuzawa’s uneasiness—something he was in no place to deal with right now.

The show started the moment Fukuzawa and Ranpo took their seats, front row center. The seats were too close to the stage, which made them far from fit for theatergoing. But Fukuzawa chose them because they were nearest to the stage in case he needed to rush over to protect a performer from an attack. Ranpo sat next to him. His legs were trembling while he idly stared off into space, as if he was still shaken up from earlier.
The theater seated roughly four hundred people. Looking around, almost all the seats were filled. The audience was a mix of ages and genders, but the biggest demographic by and large were women in their twenties.
As the chime sounded and the curtains rose, the show finally began. Fukuzawa had already read the script, so he knew what the play was about.
The death threat said, “An angel shall bring death, in the truest sense of the word, to the performer.” The use of the word angel was probably not a coincidence or joke. After all, this play was a story about an angel.
Fukuzawa thought back to the script. If the play were summarized in one phrase, it would be: a story about an angel who murders. It was a story in which each of the twelve characters are killed by the angel one after another.
The characters killed in the story have no idea they are being massacred by an angel because there is nothing unique about the ways they are murdered: stabbed with a knife, a fatal fall, strangulation, poison. Furthermore, nobody ever sees any of the murders take place; they simply die one by one. Therefore, the characters have no idea if they are being supernaturally judged by an angel or murdered by a serial killer.
One of the characters posed an idea. “If it was an angel, they would use the divine blade in their hand. There would be no reason for them to wait until someone is alone to kill them in some physical manner.” That’s why he claims that one of the twelve characters is a serial killer who is making it seem like the killer is an angel.
Another character said: “If this was the work of man, then that would mean the killer was one of us. But that’s impossible. There is no reason for us to kill one another. The angel would have a motive, though. We are sinners who disobeyed the angel, and it is an angel’s job to purge those who have done evil. To look at it from another perspective, all twelve of us are the same. We have all sinned, and we are connected through our fear of the angel. What would killing a fellow runaway help?”
The protagonist, Murakami, was like a leader who kept them together. Standing on the stage, Murakami yelled out, “O Lord, we have sinned. You have clipped us of our wings and left us on this planet to punish us. Wasn’t that enough to atone? Why must we suffer such cruelty?”
The twelve sinners were also angels in the past. They admired humans and sought to coexist with them, which enraged God so much that he stripped them of their powers and banished them to earth as humans. The play was titled The Living World Is a Dream, the Nocturnal Dream Is Reality. The plot involved former angels banished from the celestial world and rendered mortal who gathered at an old theater to earn God’s forgiveness.
During all of this, the twelve characters were killed one after another, so they tried to uncover whether it was an angel killing them or one of their fellow men. In a sense, it was a mystery story as well. Between the mystery parts, it focused on the relationships among the characters, their love, and their hatred. The former angels worked together as lovers, siblings, and enemies, but at the same time, they doubted one another. They wandered the old theater, wondering if their brethren could be the killer. Their goal was to find a certain skill user who lived there.
“What’s a skill user?” Ranpo suddenly asked.
Fukuzawa hesitated for a moment, but not because he didn’t know how to explain that skill users weren’t very well-known to the public. It was the middle of the performance—they’d stick out like a sore thumb if they started talking in the first row.
“You’ll see” was the only thing he ended up saying.
What was unique about this play was that it mentioned the existence of skill users. Revealing their existence wasn’t prohibited, but there was a darkness that surrounded it. Due to the war, the number of skill users legally working decreased, and most of them either disappeared from public eye or started working for an underground organization. In addition, there was a government agency managing domestic skill users, so broadcasting the existence of skill users could become a problem. Not many people knew of their existence outside of rumors and fairy tales; thus, a play that included one of them was an anomaly. Due to these circumstances, the skill user was depicted in good taste but as total fiction.
One skill per person.
Some could freely use their skill, while others were uncontrollable and happened automatically.

While some people were born with skills, others suddenly developed theirs.
Skills do not always make the possessor happy.
The characters in the play were searching for a skill user who fit these rules. One after another, their fellows disappeared. They grew suspicious of one another, but they continued wandering the theater in search of that one ray of hope, for that one skill user was the only one who could forgive them of their sins.
During the play, it was explained that skill users were former angels who were once kicked out of the celestial world but allowed to return. They would get back a small portion of their unlimited powers and be allowed to stand before God again. They were new angels who finished atoning for their sins—skill users.
Fukuzawa couldn’t help but think about this creative interpretation. He had encountered countless skill users due to the nature of his work. The assassin who killed the secretary was most likely one as well. There would be no way he could have made that shot with his arms tied behind his back and a sack on his head otherwise.
If he was an angel who was atoning for his sins, then the heavens were going to be chaos. Regardless, it was clear that the person who wrote the script knew about skill users and probably had hoped to accomplish something by making it into a play.
Was that somehow related to the death threat? A murderer who referred to themselves as V… A play about the search for a skill user…
Fukuzawa’s gaze wandered among the crowd. Not a single soul opened their mouth as their eyes were glued to the stage. They forgot to make expressions. They even forgot who they were as they gazed intently at the play. The power of performance was making the audience forget they were there—taking them somewhere far away. The audience had come all the way here and paid for the event. They knew it would happen; that was why they came. Everyone let the drama, the eccentric script, and the breathtaking acting, especially Murakami’s, take them away as they temporarily left their bodies behind.
But Fukuzawa couldn’t allow himself to do that. Leaving his body behind now would lead to trouble. He focused his attention and stared at the crowd.

Surely the enemy wasn’t shamelessly sitting there with the audience, but acting like a customer to sneak in was common. Fukuzawa casually looked behind himself as he sat in the front, searching for someone acting suspicious or getting out of their chair for no good reason during the act.
Straining his eyes in the darkness, he saw someone every now and then who wasn’t necessarily suspicious, but who didn’t seem to be very enthusiastic. A mother and her child. A young couple. An old man scowling. A middle-aged woman dozing off, having succumbed to her fatigue. A man wearing an overcoat who seemed to be focusing on the theater itself rather than the actors on stage.
The last man in the suit slightly caught Fukuzawa’s attention. There was nothing about his appearance that really stood out. He was your run-of-the- mill kind of guy. He wore a navy suit with a broad-brimmed bowler hat and held a T-shaped cane in one hand. He was reminiscent of the typical Western gentleman. It wasn’t clear what about him bothered Fukuzawa, exactly, but there were a few things that made him suspicious. He was sitting in the front row, he sat up completely straight and didn’t fidget in the least, and his overcoat was slightly large for his overly skinny appearance.
Upon closer inspection, the man had a piercing gaze contrary to his gentlemanlike appearance, almost as if he were looking inside the actors. They were the eyes of a predator, like a hawk or leopard moments before pouncing on its prey. One thing was for sure; they were not the eyes of someone enjoying the play. Was the large overcoat being used to hide a weapon? Was the cane in his hand a sword cane? Fukuzawa would be able to stop him from this position if the man were to commence a surprise attack, but…
Fukuzawa quietly measured the distance with his gaze. He played out every move the enemy could make in his mind and calculated. That was when…
“Hey, can I ask you something?” asked Ranpo suddenly. “Everyone here paid money to see this, right?”
“No talking during the show,” scolded Fukuzawa. However…
“Why would anyone pay to watch a story this predictable?” asked Ranpo. He looked incredulous, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. Fukuzawa had a bad feeling about this.
“I mean, even the twist is so predictable! That’s the murderer! Even a child wouldn’t need more than five minutes to figure it out!”

The people sitting on both sides of Fukuzawa and Ranpo began to mutter to themselves in annoyance, but Ranpo paid no heed.
“The reason he got to be with the protagonist at the time of the first murder was because he used a candle as a time delay for the trigger! There were only two candles! You saw it with your own eyes, right, old guy?”
A small commotion began to grow around Ranpo. The actor onstage was glancing at him as well.
“Ugh! You’re so stupid! That guy you’re turning to for help is the killer! You still have the first picture you took, right? You’d be able to see he’s the killer if you just looked at it! Why are you dawdling?”
A few audience members began to whisper. “What’s wrong with that boy?”
“But… Wait. That’s the killer? No way.”
“It would all make sense if he is, though, right?” “Stop,” Fukuzawa lightly chided Ranpo.
But Ranpo continued.
“Oh, great. Just great. The two who went to the cargo room are gonna be killed next because they just happened to see the spider’s web that could have been used as evidence. Now just watch. The killer’s going to make up some excuse to leave the room like he needs to get the map or something. Ugh! Don’t let him get away!”
Ranpo stomped his feet on the ground in an aggravated manner. Almost immediately…
“I’ll go get the map,” said the character onstage as he disappeared behind the wing curtain.
“See?! This is so aggravating!”
The commotion started to get louder. “No way. That’s the killer?”
“B-but he’s such a good guy… Why?”
“Was everything he said to his girlfriend just a lie?”
The whispers began to spread from seat to seat. Fukuzawa’s stomach pains were only getting worse.
“That’s enough. Some things you just need to keep to yourself,”

demanded Fukuzawa with a little force.
“Why? Why is everyone watching this show? It’s so aggravating!” Ranpo’s eyes were ablaze with fury. “Seriously, why? It makes no sense to me. I don’t understand anyone! Why are adults like this? Why is everyone like this? Someone, just tell me why!” he shouted.
This outburst didn’t just come out of nowhere. Doubt and stress had been swelling inside him for the longest time, waiting to explode.
“I don’t understand what anyone’s thinking! I’m scared! It feels like I’m surrounded by monsters! It doesn’t matter what I say—nobody understands me! My parents were the only ones who did, and they’re dead!”
This time, he was screaming—an anguished lamentation aimed at nowhere in particular. The protagonist onstage was begging the skill user, who was nowhere to be found, to save them. As the protagonist cried for help, so did Ranpo.
“If there’s a skill user here, save me! If there’s an angel, then save me! Why must I be alone?! Why do I have to live alone in the middle of a bunch of monsters?”
“Enough!”
Fukuzawa grabbed on to Ranpo with both hands. Ranpo glared back at him with clear animosity in his eyes.
“I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you what you want to know, so just stop.”