Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 8 Chapter 4 Part 1
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O grantors of dark disgrace
An excerpt from Rimbaud’s journal:
Hey, you found me here, meow
Date:
DGSS Operations Division, Special Operations Command Undercover Agent:
Fair weather. Evening. Waning moon.
How do you find me I wonder, m eow
The mouse scurries ahead.
A shadow amid the gray evening.
The noble female mouse scurries ahead. A gray shadow in the darkness.
I gaze up at the moon with a pipe in my mouth, delighting in the leisure.
Only when the pipe has cooled will I go.
Once I leave, and my hollow footsteps are no more,
perhaps all that remains will be death, bodies, blood, agony, and an unfortunate end.
I'm here for you meo w
Date:
DGSS Operations Division, Special Operations Command Undercover Agent:
Rain. Midnight. Waning moon.
I am writing this after crawling out of the mouse hole.
please come again, me ow
I am in a leaky brick house. I can hear the rain seeping in from somewhere. The lantern by my bedside is too dark to even see my wine. My handwriting must be close to illegible once again. But as of right now, I don’t mind it.
Because I want to write about what transpired.
Up until only two hours ago, I was in the rebel forces’—the May Uprising’s—hidden cellar. Everything is over now. The results were exceptional. That is, if you’re one of the higher-ups.
I, on the other hand, do not consider this mission a success. The moment I stepped into the cellar, the rebels were already there together. And in the end, he died.
I referred to all the members as “he” because there was actually only one member in this rebel group. It was their leader, a skill user known as Pan.
We battled. He was strong. Furthermore, he had a secret weapon: an artificial skill-derived life-form known as Black No. 12. He had created it all by himself. It was a monster capable of manipulating gravity at will and nullifying any physical attack. Pan could control this life-form by giving it any command he pleased.
But our intelligence bureau did a wonderful job this time around. (I wish they were always this good.) They discovered beforehand that Pan was inputting commands via a special type of metal powder, so all I had to do was destroy the machine emitting said powder.
Upon being emancipated from Pan’s mind control, Black No. 12 immediately attacked his creator.
It was a chilling sight. Black No. 12 simply made a fist, and half the cellar was gone…along with Pan’s upper body as well.
After Black No. 12 lost consciousness, I carried him out of the cellar. He is currently resting at this cheap hotel.
I wonder what will become of him now. Will the government dispose of him?
It is terrifyingly chilly. The hearth’s flames feel so far away.
Hey, you found me here, meow
Date:
How do you find me I wonder, m eow
DGSS Operations Division, Special Operations Command Undercover Agent:
Fair weather. Noon. Strong winds from the east.
I am writing this after putting on my thermal underclothes, fur gloves, earmuffs, and heavy overcoat.
I just spoke with my contact at a café and was given orders on how to handle Black No. 12. I was so taken aback by what I heard that I had the contact clarify the details three times.
The government apparently believes Black No. 12 could be a valuable asset because he had the entire rebel forces’ network hammered into his head when he was Pan’s guard dog. France wants to make him a spy. They want me to train him and keep an eye on him.
Me? Train him?
Am I even capable of such a thing?
I can’t form relationships due to the nature of my work. Friends and lovers alike are liabilities to spies. Both my parents and my previous paramour think that I died in prison.
Can a person like me truly guide someone?
I do not know the answer to that question. But what if I could do
it?
Me, someone known only by a code name after throwing away
my past and given name. Me, doing something for another person, for a nation, for a friend who had been reborn. The thought alone is surprisingly exhilarating.
My life and death will not go down in the history books. All that will be given to me in death will be a cracked, unmarked grave. But that is fine…so long as I can leave something for someone before I die.
My first mission is to assign Black No. 12 a new code name. And I already have one in mind: Paul Verlaine. It was my real name, the one given to me by my parents.
Paul: The day you read this journal will be the day you learn your secret. I pray that moment will bring you true happiness.
Date:
DGSS Operations Division, Special Operations Command Undercover Agent:
Cloudy. Midnight. No visible moon.
I cannot believe it. I finally managed to decipher The Secret of the Gentle Forest. That is where a beast from hell itself slumbers.
And that is where Verlaine’s
I'm here for you meo w
(The page is ripped, making it impossible to decipher the rest.)
please come again, me ow
The small moon illuminated one corner of the blue twilight. Ougai Mori was asleep on a train.
Outside the train car window, an azure nightscape hung over the dark woodland, its trees whispering to one another. The tiny city lights of Yokohama faintly glowed in the far distance as if it were another planet millions of light-years away.
There were no other passengers inside the train. Only empty wooden seats that seemed to go on forever. Ougai Mori leaned his shoulder against the armrest by the window, his head drooping as he dozed off. Faint dark creases under his eyes conveyed his exhaustion.
He was on the run—escaping an assassin.
Chances were good that he’d be detected if he tried to escape by car. This assassin was a former spy and an extraordinary one at that. He had been trained by a European government, so outmaneuvering him was Mori’s only option. That was why he purchased an entire station and train for himself and cut all the surveillance cameras, thus creating a train line that didn’t exist.
It would be tomorrow morning before he arrived at his hideout. An announcement on the intercom informed him that the train was approaching the station, and the train car gradually began slowing down. There was absolutely nothing suspicious about this particular train. It had to look like any ordinary locomotive that arrived at and departed the station on time. The only difference was nobody would be getting off or on.
The train pulled into the station. Mori’s eyes were still closed. The next time he would open his eyes would be somewhere where he was finally safe. Or perhaps he would never open his eyes again.
Only the gods knew the answer to that.
“S-someone, help! Please—let me down from here!” A man’s screams echoed through the night sky.
“You want me to let you down? Why?” another man asked gently. The dry wind blowing past the tall structure carried their voices.
They were on top of a tower crane.
The crane was being used to carry material for a high-rise building in the middle of construction, located right in between the suburbs of Yokohama and where aircrafts flew by.
“I never tied you up. I didn’t even beat you until you could no longer walk. If you want to get down, then be my guest.”
The man with the kind voice was Verlaine, who was casually sitting at the end of an iron jib while his eyes were focused on the beautiful nightscape.
“Don’t be ridiculous! No ordinary human can just walk down this tower to safety!”
N, pale in the face, was clutching onto the iron frame with all fours for dear life. The wind would hit him if he lifted his head even a little, and that could knock him off-balance. There was nowhere safe for him to go.
After kidnapping N from the research facility, Verlaine used his skill to walk him all the way here. He walked up the side of the tower as if he were casually crossing the street.
“It’s a nice place, isn’t it?” Verlaine asked softly. “The perfect place to go whenever you want to talk in private.”
N couldn’t even lift his head. It took everything he had to make sure his sweat-drenched hands were holding on to the iron frame.
“What do you…want to know?” N weakly managed to ask, out of breath.
“Tell me everything you know about The Secret of the Gentle Forest.”
The wind was strong and cold as it roared between them, but Verlaine’s kind, well-projected voice was not cut off even a little by it.
“I can’t.” N looked up at Verlaine while still clutching the frame. “That information is the only thing keeping me alive. Once I tell you, you’ll kill me.”
“I’m going to kill you either way,” replied Verlaine while chewing a pear that he had taken out of his pocket.
N’s face froze. Verlaine then got to his feet and looked down at N before saying in an icy, hollow tone:
“You should know the title The Secret of the Gentle Forest. It was the title of the last chapter in Pan’s manual for creating artificial skills. I got a glimpse of the manual after the government got their hands on it, but six pages of the last chapter had been omitted. The government was probably intentionally trying to cover something up. You, however, received a stolen unabridged copy from your intelligence network, which means you should have read it in its entirety. Now, answer me. What was written on those six pages missing from The Secret of the Gentle Forest?”
“If I explained everything to you…,” N replied, his voice taut. “Would you believe me?”
“Depends on what you tell me.”
“What if I told you the last chapter was already missing from the manual I read and that I don’t know a thing? You still wouldn’t believe me, would you?”
“Then why did you even bring up The Secret of the Gentle Forest? You mentioned it because you knew it was important. Am I wrong?”
N lowered his gaze and replied, “The pages were intentionally omitted.
It was clear there had to be something, so I just used it to my advantage.” “Enough joking around.”
“I was standing between life and death. I would’ve said anything to save my life. Even surprised myself.”
Verlaine looked down at him in silence as if he were staring at the remains of a dead insect.
“I see,” he eventually replied, then approached N before lightly placing a foot on his shoulder.
Hey, you found me here, meow
“W-wait!” N desperately clung on to the frame as his body shifted to the side. “I really don’t know! The only one who does is the person who got rid of that entry! It was a spy named Rimbaud who apparently did it!”
Verlaine’s foot suddenly froze. “What?”
“After getting the original report, Rimbaud disposed of those pages before submitting it to the government. That’s why he’s the only one who knows what was written in them. That’s what a mole in the French government said. That’s why I really don’t know anything!”
“It was Rimbaud…?” Verlaine lowered his foot. His eyes scanned the past. “That’s impossible. He wouldn’t hide anything from me.”
N looked up at Verlaine while trying to calm his breathing.
“He’s the last person who would do something like that. He trusted me.” Verlaine’s gaze wandered empty space. “He gave me a name when I was nothing more than Black No. 12. He gave me his name. He then changed his code name to my original name—to Rimbaud. We traded names. It was his idea.”
Verlaine took off his hat. Written in small print on the inside of the brim was the name Rimbaud.
“He was strong. He was the only one with a skill that rivaled mine, even out of everyone in the organization. We were partners. No, not just partners. I was his closest friend, he told me. And to be perfectly honest, it was an honor.”
Verlaine gazed up, the night sky outlining his profile. He then added: “But I didn’t like him.”
A cold breeze suddenly blew past him as the stars silently sparkled. “You didn’t…like him…?”
Verlaine stared down at N with a cold gaze, then put his hat back on. “I’ve said too much.” He looked away as if he had lost all interest in the
researcher. “I wish we could have talked some more, but I’m a busy man. I’ve still got a rush job to take care of. I have to kill my last target before Dazai finishes his preparations. That’s why we’ll continue this conversation when I get back. Until then, please enjoy the nighttime view.”
Verlaine then turned around and began walking away. “W-wait…! At least help me down from here!”
“Help you down?” Verlaine looked back as if he’d just been told the strangest thing. “You’re free to get down yourself. It’s simple. All you need to do is take one single step.”
All the blood had left N’s pale face. Verlaine then stepped forward without turning around again and disappeared into the darkness below.
The train’s operator peered into the darkness with one hand on the controls. He was a veteran with twenty-seven years under his belt. Through rain, wind, and earth-shattering bombs during the great war, he had kept his hand on those controls in front of him.
But even for him, today’s job was unusual in every sense of the word. First, his client somehow purchased an entire railroad company in a single night—and the trains and their schedules as well. Furthermore, the train in question was going to be transporting only a single passenger. When he complained to his boss, he was simply told to stop asking questions and just do the job, that things would be even worse for him if he tried to get out of this.
The operator focused his gaze back on the view in front of him. The trees were sinking into darkness. All he could see were the silver rail tracks and the train’s yellow headlights. That was everything he had to guide him ahead.
His boss was most likely telling the truth. This was Yokohama, the city of demons, after all. Anything could happen. The operator never once got the urge to go speak with the solo passenger. If he did, he would end up with his own severed head in his hands.
All of a sudden, he felt as if he saw something move in the endless sea of darkness. His well-trained eyes locked onto it in the distance. Was it some sort of animal? No. Perhaps a tree was rustling in the wind? No, not that, either.
It was a person. Someone was standing on the tracks.
Before he could even think of the dangers, he was already pulling the brake lever. Compressed air was released as the harsh sound of metal reduction gears echoed, but he didn’t make it in time. The train hit the person on the tracks.
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