Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 4 Chapter 4 Part 6

Chapter 4 Part 6

“Atsushi! Atsushi, wake up!”
Someone was calling him on the other side of the blur. They grabbed his shoulder and sternly shook him.
“…Mn…”
“Atsushi! Are you okay?!”
Atsushi managed to open his eyes. He saw a face on the other side of the blur, but his eyes wouldn’t focus.
“Kunikida…,” Atsushi said in a hoarse voice. “What about the island…?
And Dazai…?”

“The island stopped attacking once that giant boulder appeared. We were finally able to get over here after that. Kenji and Tanizaki are heading to the underground bunker with Yosano right now.”
How long was I unconscious?
Atsushi managed to lift his head and look at the clock tower with his blurred vision. The edifice was warped, but it seemed to still be working. The time was 1:10 PM. There were still four minutes left according to the time limit Wells gave him. Kenji should be able to forcibly open the door to the underground bunker, and they should make it in time.
“What about Akutagawa…?”
“Is Akutagawa nearby?” asked Kunikida as he looked around. “There’s nobody else here. More importantly, Atsushi, where’s the enemy?”
Half-buried in machine parts, Atsushi gazed into the sky—the endless blue sky.
“Gab…disappeared,” he answered. “He probably no longer exists in this world. He returned to the darkness where his master waits.”
Kunikida helped Atsushi up, and they struggled along off the mountain of machines.
“Kunikida,” muttered Atsushi, “what are skills?” “Where did that come from?”
“I think a lot of skill users believe their skills are a part of them,” Atsushi said as if answering his own question. “But maybe they’re wrong. Maybe they come from somewhere else and stick to us. Maybe they’re something we can’t understand… I don’t really know how to put it into words, but that’s how I feel.”
“…Focus on your recovery first,” Kunikida suggested after a few moments of silence. “You’ll have plenty of time to think after that.”
All of a sudden, the ground began to shake.
An earthquake? No, couldn’t be. It’s a man-made island. Gab’s skill should’ve stopped, too.
“What…?”
Kunikida turned his head in the direction of the noise. Immediately, the wireless transceiver in his pocket began to beep as well.
“W-w-w-w-w-we’ve got trouble!” shrieked the captain in a panic on the other side of the line. “Th-th-the ships…! Ahhh!!”

“Calm down!” Kunikida yelled into the transceiver. “What happened?
Where are you? What was that earthquake?!”
“The wharf exploded! The ships, too! And the sea level is rising at the coast! The island is going to sink!”
“What?!”
Sink?
Nobody could escape if the wharf and ships were gone. If the island sank now, everybody on the island, including the guests, would end up on the bottom of the ocean.
“Oh!” Atsushi exclaimed as he remembered what he saw underground. “It’s the island’s safety mechanism. Gab existed to protect the island’s secrets from foreign enemies. The island was designed to destroy itself if he happened to die.”
“Then that means… Captain! How much time do we have until the island sinks?!”
“A-a-a-according to the guards’ report, we have approximately eight minutes!”
It wasn’t enough time. Even if they called the mainland and asked for help, it would still take them thirty minutes at best. Plus, there were many tourists on the island. There was no way they could all survive trying to stay afloat without life jackets for twenty minutes.
“Damn it!” cursed Kunikida. “What the hell is happening to this island?!”
Atsushi suddenly turned his gaze at the sky. “Do you…hear something?” he asked.
“What?”
It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t the island sinking, either. Something was descending from the sky with what sounded like a heavy flapping of its wings.
“Hey, that’s…”
Kunikida pointed at something up in the air, so Atsushi looked as well. It was a blue aircraft, and it was coming their way. They were greeted by a loud voice.
“Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
It was a helicopter. Standing in the hatchway with his arms crossed and cackling was…

“Ranpo?” muttered Kunikida, struck dumb with surprise. “And I believe that’s the Division’s aircraft used for secret missions. But why…?”
Ranpo’s mirthful voice suddenly started coming out of Kunikida’s wireless transceiver. He must have tuned in to the specific frequency.
“Ah, what would you guys do without me? What a mess! Dazai sent a video message to my phone a little earlier telling me what was going on, and I figured you guys would be in trouble about now, so I urged the president to let me help! You better thank this amazing detective, you little worker ants!”
Ranpo was another member of the detective agency, and he and Dazai were its two sharpest detectives. Seeing that Dazai told Ranpo what was happening in advance must have meant he predicted the agents were going to be in danger and that something was going to happen to him to prevent him from doing anything himself to help.
Atsushi shook his head.
Even when he’s dying, Dazai is still Dazai…
“The coast guard should be there soon with a rescue boat,” assured Ranpo on the other side of the transceiver. “It’s big enough for everyone on the island to get on, so don’t worry about a thing.”
The helicopter above gradually approached the island. Atsushi squinted as the propeller blew a gust of wind his way. Before the helicopter even landed, a small shadow hopped out from behind Ranpo—who was boastfully standing in the hatchway—and ran straight for Atsushi.
“…Kyouka!”
Robed in a kimono, the young girl with black hair threw her arms around Atsushi, and she buried her face in Atsushi’s stomach because she was much shorter.
“…I was worried about you,” muttered Kyouka with her face still pressed against Atsushi’s abdomen.
“Sorry about that.”
Atsushi then suddenly heard another voice carried by the wind. “It takes true talent to still make a girl cry at that age, Atsushi.” “…?!”
Atsushi turned around. A shadow approached him, hidden in the cloud of dust. He had disheveled hair with a sand-colored overcoat. His bare skin could be seen through the hole in his shirt where he’d been stabbed in the stomach. Closely following behind him were Yosano and the other detectives.
“Dazai!”
“I heard what you did. I can’t believe you would resuscitate me just when I had finally managed to die! Just terrible. Do you know how much it hurts getting stabbed, by the way? Oh, and I heard you guys had been discussing how to bring me back to life behind my back, too. Now I’ll have to come up with a new plan to kill myself. But—”
“DAZAAAAAAI!” “Oof?!”
Kunikida drop-kicked Dazai from the side, nearly breaking him in two and sending him flying to the ground.
“HOW…MANY TIMES…ARE YOU GOING TO…SCREW UP THE JOB…BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SIT STILL?!?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH…WE HAD TO GO THROUGH…TO BRING YOU BACK TO LIFE…?!?!”
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Kunikida, please stop kicking and choking and yelling at me!”
“The hell are you talking about?! ‘Finally managed to die’? You’re no longer human! You don’t deserve that right! If you really want to die that much, I’ll kill you myself! How about this?! And this?! How about from this angle?!”
Nobody even attempted to stop Kunikida as he pinned Dazai to the ground and choked him. Everyone simply watched over them in relief.
I just had a thought…
I wonder if Verne’s friends and comrades, the Seven Traitors, were like this with each other, too? When the guardian Verne disappeared and the skill life-form Gab was born, Gab joined the band of thieves in search of friends. But Gab could only be with them by repeating those first moments, so maybe he was never able to feel the bond that his master felt with the Seven Traitors. If Gab had friends like Verne did or like I do with the detective agency, then maybe things wouldn’t have had to end this way.
Atsushi turned around and looked at the pile of machines. Nobody could answer his question. Only the hot summer breeze of the ocean blew over the rubble. Atsushi alternately visualized the quiet-mannered young man Verne and the wide-eyed, energetic boy Gab until they disappeared into the cerulean sky.
…Summer’s still far from over.