Chapter 34: Chapter 3.3
Later on, I'll remember this day
"And so theeen, I was still little, so I got really nervous when I swallowed the watermelon seed. I thought it might sprout in my stomach, and then what would I do?"
After we'd returned from the pub, Siesta's face was so red that her original skin tone was completely lost. She was sitting on the bed with her legs splayed out in an M-shape, bouncing up and down, even though she'd been injured just the other day. She was wearing a bathrobe, just like I was, and every time she bounced, certain other parts bounced dramatically, too.
...Or maybe they only seemed to because my head wasn't really working, either.
I didn't know. I couldn't seem to figure it out. After all, I was drunk, too.
I was pretty sure that, at that restaurant with its view of the city lights, we'd promised "Just one more drink," then promised again... About ten times, I think. For the last one, we might have pinky-sworn, linked our arms, and drained our glasses. Urgh, I can't remember...
"Assistant? Are you listening to me?"
"Yeah, I'm listening. You were talking about whether a watermelon was a vegetable or a fruit, right?"
"Mm-hmm. I asked for a melon, but then they brought me a lemon. I had no idea what was going on."
Desperately forcing my sluggish brain to function, I sat in a chair facing Siesta, nodding along with her story.
Our conversation had been barely functional for a while now, and I kinda suspected she'd been telling me an extremely tedious story, but there was just no way Siesta—flawless, calm, cool, and collected Siesta, the greatest ace detective in history—would dribble on about anything pointless.
Probably just too high-minded for me, I thought, so I kept my eyes locked
on hers and listened carefully. Siesta's eyes drooped in a liquid, melting way, and there wasn't a trace of her usual cool image to be seen.
"Say, why have you been so far away all this time?" Siesta pouted sulkily, and I felt as if I was doing something bad somehow. "Come over here."
"...Into bed?"
"Yes. Let's talk over here together, okay?" I...wasn't sure about that idea.
A young man and woman, getting into bed together... Couldn't that, um, be a problem? In multiple ways?
I tried to harness what little solid thoughts and reason I had left, but— "Is it not okay?" she asked.
"Nah, it's fine."
If that was the answer my brain had coughed up, then that was the answer I'd give. Obeying the results of my thought experiment, I slipped into the bed Siesta was sitting on.
...Did I actually need to get into bed? The thought crossed my mind, and then it promptly vanished.
"Heh-heh. This is the first time we've slept together like this, isn't it?"
Then Siesta got under the covers beside me, and there we were. In the same bed, under the same blankets.
"You're right here, Kimi. So close." Siesta rolled onto her side, gazing at me.
The lights in the room were dim, but I could make out her face clearly. "If I went two days without seeing you, I really would forget your face." "So that doesn't change even when you're drunk, huh?"
"Heh-heh. Well, picking on you is fun, Kimi." "There she is, the young sadist."
"The truth is that you like it when I pick on you, though." "Don't make up weird motivations for me!"
"Then would you rather I never teased you again, as long as we live?" "..."
"Should I just not talk to you?" "..."
"You really are funny, Kimi." "...Shove it."
"That crabby face is kinda cute."
"That's not a compliment!"
"Well, I'll forget it in two days, though."
"So now we're back to that?!" I rolled over toward Siesta. "But..."
What I saw was her profile; she was gazing at the ceiling. "I'll never forget these three years I spent with you."
I don't think I'll ever forget the bravery on her face as long as I live. "Heh-heh. Whoops, I got a little serious, there."
However, Siesta promptly reverted to her blind drunk expression and rolled over toward me.
"If they took seriousness away from you, what would you have left?" I asked.
I'd missed my chance to revert to my former position, and Siesta and I ended up lying there face-to-face.
"That's so mean. Just what do you think I am anyway?"
Logic incarnate? The cerebral ace detective or something? Was that what I should say?
"Why don't we..."
Smoothly, Siesta closed the distance between us.
Just a few more centimeters and our noses—and possibly our lips—would touch. Our bodies were already almost pressed together, and from the swell of Siesta's ample bosom, I could hear the sound of her leaping heart.
"...do something silly for a change?" My whole body grew hot.
Come to think of it, we'd discussed her three great drives at one point.
"Siesta, I'm..." The next thing I knew, I was leaning over Siesta. "...Assistant." Siesta shut her eyes, tightly.
Making up my mind, I brought my face, my lips, closer to her, closer—
Most late-night moments of weakness make you
want to die in the morning
"Phew, someone kill me, please."
When I woke up the next morning, after a minute or so of attempting to think, that was the first comment that came to mind.
First things first—my head hurt like a bitch; last night's alcohol was definitely still in my system. And that headache was figurative and literal, thanks to the ace detective fast asleep next to me, breathing peacefully.
I'd heard that when you drank enough liquor to fill a bathtub, you forgot everything by the next morning...but unfortunately, my cerebral cortex remembered yesterday's sorry display with devastating clarity.
"Uu, ghk, kill me noooow..."
My first-ever drinking binge had combined with the late-night mood to create a mortifying exchange. What the hell had I been thinking yesterday?
What had made me get into bed with Siesta? And after that... "Bluuurgh."
Various emotions and the contents of my stomach forced their way up in a wave of nausea. Clapping a hand over my mouth, I started to get out of bed, and just then—
"..."
Siesta's eyes opened, and we made eye contact. We gazed at each other, blinking, for a moment that seemed to stretch on forever.
"...Good morning." "..."
I greeted her tentatively, but there was no response.
Instead, Siesta ducked under the covers, checking on something. Then she poked her head out again. Her expression was unreadable. That part was fairly normal...but for some reason, I could nearly sense something like menace in it.
"Good morning," Siesta answered after an eternity. Firmly securing her bathrobe around her, she took a small silver attaché case out of the suitcase she always used.
I couldn't see exactly what she was doing, since she was facing away, but I assumed she was taking something out of the case. Just as I thought that, Siesta turned back to me.
"Assistant, I want you to hold out your arm."
"Maybe after you put the huge needle away!"
Siesta was holding a syringe in her right hand; there was liquid leaking out of its tip. "It's fine. It'll only hurt for a second."
"Hell no! When I said I wanted to die, I wasn't being serious!"
"It won't kill you. This injection temporarily erases human memories, that's all."
"You're kidding, right?! Is that another one of your special Seven Tools?!" "No, it's not. Come on, don't you remember? At the cultural festival, where we caught the Miss Hanakos. This has just a little of the same
ingredient that was in that drug mixed into it."
Th-this couldn't be worse... That stuff's guaranteed to work...
"It's fine. I've run some experiments and made an improved version that won't damage your health."
"Wait just a minute, did you run those on me?! I thought I'd been more forgetful than usual lately; was that why?!"
If it was, this was no joke. Still in my bathrobe, I tried to bolt out of the apartment, but—
"I won't let you get away."
"Ghk, hah." Siesta leaped onto my back, straddling me and pinning me to the floor.
"Now put out your arm. You're going to forget everything about yesterday... About me yesterday."
I was no match for a ticked-off Siesta, and the syringe bore down on my right arm—
Ding-dong. At the very last second, the doorbell rang, announcing a visitor. "...Somebody's here."
"..."
"You're sure you don't need to get that?" "Tch!"
"Don't tsk at me; just...don't." It's totally out of character for you.
Getting off me reluctantly, Siesta headed for the door. "Yes?"
When she opened it, standing on the other side was... "It was really noisy in here. What were you doing?"
...Alicia, the proxy detective.
"Well, not like I care." She put her hands on her hips and declared, "Mission accomplished."
Alicia surveyed us triumphantly. She was holding a small bag.
Mission accomplished? She couldn't actually have found the sapphire eye after that, could she?
Had Alicia—our Alicia—managed to find what Siesta had nearly given up on?
"Here."
Alicia held the bag out to me. Inside was— "An eye patch?"
It was a perfectly ordinary black eye patch, something that made no sense in the context of the conversation.
"The eye that's actually important is that one, isn't it?" Alicia boldly declared, pointing at my left eye. "Unless you wear an eye patch like you're supposed to, it won't heal up."
Standing on tiptoe, Alicia tied the eye patch on. "...So you noticed, huh?"
"Well, we were together for two whole weeks."
I hadn't intentionally been hiding it from Alicia, but my left eye had been wounded in that fight with Hel. As far as day-to-day life was concerned, it wasn't much of a problem, but my visual impairment had caused me to lose track of Alicia in town several times.
"That phantom eye may not even exist—instead of relying on it, you should take good care of the one that's already here."
Apparently, I'd misread Alicia a bit as a person. The girl who openly expressed all her emotions was probably just the surface. Her true nature was bound to be—
"That's my answer." Alicia glanced at Siesta. "Is it the right one?"
Was that what it had been? Had this been the problem Siesta had set for Alicia all along? Had she wanted to see what sort of answer the girl would come up with, when given the impossible task of finding something that didn't exist? After a short silence, Princess Kaguya of the Bamboo gave her long-awaited answer.
"J-just as I'd planned."
Siesta's gaze was wandering so dramatically it beggared belief. "No, seriously, how bad at lying are you?"
Even if it was only for a moment, the proxy had outmatched the ace.
The turning point for everything
"I'm not terribly good at being clever in the moment."
Siesta was walking beside me, her expression unusually bitter.
After the episode that morning, Siesta had accompanied me to the supermarket to do some shopping now that her legs were fully healed.
"I haven't seen you like that in a long time," I commented.
The ace detective seemed to be a perfect superhuman, but she had a surprising number of weak points.
"...Shut up."
It was unusual for her to be this cranky, too. It wasn't bad to flip the power dynamic once in a while, was it?
"Do you like your present from a girl that much?" Siesta shot a cold glance at the eye patch over my left eye.
But before I could make some kind of objection—
"...No, sorry. That's not what I meant." Siesta's shoulders hunched just a little, and there was less confidence in her voice than usual. "I'm just embarrassed that I wasn't as attentive about your eye."
"Is that right?"
For a moment, I wasn't sure what to say.
"Well, you know. You're human, too, I guess." I chose something totally obvious. "I'm glad you're human enough to get yanked around by petty emotions like that."
"...Really."
She smiled faintly, then nodded quietly two or three times.
After that, we walked on for a while, and then Siesta abruptly stopped. She was studying the sign for an underground live music venue. There was a poster for a performer pasted to the wall nearby—and although it didn't give their name, it advertised an upcoming guest from Japan.
"Siesta?"
"...It's nothing." Siesta shook her head and started walking again. "Not yet."
"...?"
Just as I was about to ask her what she meant, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. According to the screen, it was an international call. Wondering what was up, I hit the TALK button and heard a very familiar voice.
"Hey, you damn brat. It looks like you managed to survive somehow."
She talked like a middle-aged man, which was probably why guys tended to avoid such an attractive woman. Telling her so was guaranteed to get me drawn and quartered, though.
"That's what you should have said when we ran into each other earlier, Ms.
Fuubi."
Plus, Siesta and I both sustained major injuries because of that Jack the Ripper case you brought us. Earlier, when you randomly appeared in our apartment, you didn't mention that at all.
As I thought back, it struck me as incredibly unfair, and I was planning to continue with a complaint or three, when—
"Huh? When did we run into each other?"
The voice from the phone wasn't teasing. She sounded genuinely bewildered.
"Come on, what are you talking about? It was two weeks ago. You dropped in unannounced and told us something about a sapphire eye, remember?"
"Huh? I only visited you once, to discuss the Jack the Ripper incident with you. You confuse me with somebody?"
I broke out in goose bumps all over.
"I just heard that you two had a hell of a fight after that; this is the first time I've called."
Whoa, wait, you're kidding me. What was that, then? Two weeks ago, when we'd met Ms. Fuubi, or the individual who looked like her, for the second time— No, that's right. Come to think of it, there was something weird. When she'd shown up then, she'd had her Zippo lighter, even though she'd given it to me earlier.
"Hello? Kimizuka? Hellooooo?"
The voice on the other end of the phone seemed to be getting farther and farther away.
My unpleasant hunch changed to certainty crawling all through me. "Assistant."
Siesta must have figured out what this conversation was about already. She nodded quietly, her expression grim.
The Ms. Fuubi we'd met in London that second time had been a fake.
There was only one being who could pull off that trick: Cerberus, the shape-shifter.
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