The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume9 Chapter 2
Status: Incomplete
1/3 parts completed
Chapter 2: Colorless Prequel@Uchimaku Hayabusa
Part 1
I, Uchimaku Hayabusa, was on a mission to take responsibility for my own words. Namely, I was visiting a giant amusement park that made use of the “Tokyo” image despite actually existing a little bit outside the city.
“Ah ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha!! Hey, detective, where should we go next, what should we ride next, what should we do next!? Oh, the swing-by coaster’s congestion level is at green! We can ride right away if we go now, detective!!”
The park was brightly illuminated for night and I was sitting exhausted on a bench, but I felt a tug on the side of my coat. The tug came from a twintailed middle school girl who was also shoving a smartphone into my face to show me the official park map app. As for her outfit…I couldn’t even call this one a swimsuit. She had a red ribbon about as thick as two fingers wrapped around her body. On top of that, she wore a wafer-style checked ribbon tie, a whipped cream white coat, and a chocolate brown miniskirt. With the shortcake-like hat pretty much hanging on the side of her head, the overall concept seemed to be a wedding cake. She also had something like a sword hanging at her waist, but it may have been an LED light modeled after a wedding’s candle lighting. To be blunt, it was insane in more ways than one.
“We’ve already ridden the coaster twelve times today… We’ve been here since morning, so we’ve gone on all the rides about three times now. The young women running the rides recognize us now.”
“Huh? Why are you all limp, detective?”
“What happened to the girl who got out of breath just running up some stairs? It isn’t normal to outdo a professional police detective in a competition of stamina.”
Was this a relative of that medically baseless claim that snacks went in a different stomach?
…Now, why were we here? It was a lingering effect of the zombie outbreak from the month before.
I had carelessly said I would go on an amusement park date with her if we escaped that hell.
“Fine then. I guess I need to start acting more soothing to help you with your exhaustion. It isn’t long until the night illumination parade, so is there anything we can use to kill some time?”
“You’re still not done riding things!?”
“Shut up. I have your word on this. Oh, the Ferris wheel is open! This is our chance, detective! C’mon, get up and run!!”
And thus I was dragged through the park by the Mystery Freak.
There were still a few people in line for the Ferris wheel, but it did feel like a miracle given how congested the amusement park was. If you bought a fairly expensive free pass, you could enter through a special gate and skip the line onto the Ferris wheel, but it had become entirely meaningless now that everyone had one of those priority passes.
I bought a drink from the part-time girl who approached the line and we waited our turn. I didn’t know if it was the standard price in amusement parks or if it was due to the recent bourgeois boom, but a single paper cup was ridiculously expensive.
Enbi also handed several bills to the girl.
Just a month before, that sight would have been truly shocking.
“How can you buy ice cream in December? And while I’m at it, there has to be something wrong with you to wear that swimsuit…no, that red ribbon with only a miniskirt and coat colored like chocolate or whipped cream on top.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. Make sure you call it a rice milk gelato. This is brand-name rice, you know?”
Rice milk, huh?
A diet of avoiding carbonated drinks to lose weight had been popular recently, but it had completely died out.
There was a simple reason for that: everyone retained their memories of the zombie outbreak.
People had bitten other people and devoured their flesh and blood. I had been a part of it, but my police lifestyle had given me the resistance needed to overcome that kind of gloomy experience. The Mystery Freak was the same, but the majority of people were not. Those who had actually become zombies were of course scarred by the experience, but it had apparently caused quite a commotion even among the people who had only heard about it. Even with the strange financial situation recently, the meat industry had lost a ton of money. Some people had stopped eating meat altogether and others could not even stand cheese or butter. Of course, sticking to complete vegetarianism would be incredibly difficult, so I expected the consumption of meat to recover after a bit.
“Personally, I can’t believe you would drink hot coffee, detective.”
“?”
“This is an amusement park during the on-season, so don’t you think the pay bathrooms are going to be the busiest part of the park? Don’t blame me when drinking that comes back to bite you.”
Before long, it was our turn.
The young woman in charge guided us into the open door of the gondola.
As soon as the door closed and locked, Enbi grinned at me from the opposite seat.
“Now then, detective.”
“Let’s enjoy the scenery.”
“Now, now! We’re inside a locked room together! No one can stop this long ride for the next twenty five minutes!! You know what that means, don’t you? Your heart had better be pounding, dammit!!”
“Stop it, you moron! When it comes to you and locked rooms, I’m more afraid of someone ending up dead!!”
A struggle ensued. I managed to hold off the approaching love monster for a while. I was afraid some kind of safety feature would kick in and stop the Ferris wheel, but it must not have been that fragile.
“Detective.”
At some point, Enbi had ended up sitting next to me instead of across from me.
“You asked before why I would buy ice cream in December. To be honest, it wasn’t easy eating that in this weather.”
“See? I was right.”
“But I had a good reason to choose something vanilla flavored.”
“…”
“I mean, if I set up the perfect mood, shut my eyes, and gently puckered my lips, wouldn’t it be awful if it ended up tasting like my hamburger’s barbecue sauce? It would seem too real and wake us up from the dream!! That’s why I made sure that this middle school girl’s lips have a vanilla scent. So what do you have to say about that ideal, detective?”
“Hold on.”
“So hurry up and grab my shoulders and kiss me! I’m perfectly okay with you going in to find out what my tongue tastes like too!! And I think coffee-flavored lips fits your image perfectly! Kyah☆ I can’t hold back any longer, so let’s create a coffee float flavor together! If you aren’t going to make the move, then I’ll have to! Muchuu!!”
“What happened to the qualifier that this had to remain wholesome!?”
Enbi was using both hands to mimic an octopus, so I grabbed her face with both hands and just barely managed to push her away.
Nothing untoward had happened, but a man and a girl were covered in sweat and gasping for breath inside a small room.
But even if someone misinterpreted the situation, there was no danger of a uniformed police officer running in with a monstrous look on his face and a baton in one hand.
A distant look filled my eyes.
This was why I had been able to spend an entire workday at an amusement park with the Mystery Freak despite all my pay cuts and the fact that I had no time off left.
The news kept saying Japan had entered an unprecedented (and eerily unexplainable) period of massive consumption and gluttony, but the real story was nowhere near as happy.
When it came down to it, public servants were just employees. They wouldn’t work without getting paid.
Since Globe & Ingot, Triple Roses, and all those other credit rating agencies were causing unpredictable daily fluctuations in the value of the Japanese yen, the government could not judge anything’s value properly and could not calculate out any kind of budget. Since they didn’t know the value of a single yen, they could not even find the answer to 1 + 1. In all seriousness, if they decided one week that a project needed one hundred million yen, the necessary amount could grow to fifty or even one hundred times as much using the value of the yen a week later. Whatever the cause, an organization could not function if the accountants raised the white flag and failed to come up with a budget. Not enough was of course a problem, but too much created suspicions of slush funds or mismanagement.
It might be hard to understand for those of us who live in the world of the yen and use the yen for everything, but major corporations that work hard at exporting and importing and government bureaucrats who focus on the foreign exchange market were about ready to faint. And if those at the top could not act, then the local offices would never get the stamp of approval when they requested a budget.
You could say Japan’s administrative and executive agencies had all shut their doors and gone on vacation.
It was a strange situation where no one could do anything despite all the money they were making.
The general public had not been told, but the police were no exception.
In other words, I had not taken time off. I had gone into the office, but the police department had been locked up and I couldn’t get in.
Some of the uniformed officers in the police boxes were voluntarily going on patrols, but how long would that last? Without getting paid, they couldn’t eat and they would be forced to spend some of their time finding another source of money. Plus, public servants were barred from having a second job, so they would be forced to choose between one and the other. No one could stick with the idealistic answer forever.
“There.”
Enbi must not have liked that I was lost in thought because she moved from her spot next to me.
That is, she placed her small butt on my lap and leaned all her weight back on me.
“What are you doing, Mystery Freak?”
“What’s wrong with this? Isn’t it all so pretty! It was nice when we rode it during the day, but it’s completely different at night!! It’s like a carpet of stars.”
Enbi used me as her chair and kicked her legs around.
Her words drew my eye out the window.
The view of the night had to be quite different from what we would have seen just a week before. Everything was unnecessarily bright as if to show off all the money that was filling every nook and cranny of the city. Bonds only earned interest every six months or every year, but there must have been some magic trick to earning a fortune must faster than that. It was December, so a lot of houses were decorated like they were Christmas trees themselves.
Who could say how much that kind of thing actually cost, but no one batted an eye at loans that would take decades to pay back. Money was flying around like a blizzard and everyone just wanted to enjoy the present.
But didn’t that make it all feel somehow ominous?
This unnatural state of affluence would not continue forever. It was just like a scene in a comedy film where someone walks off a cliff while blindfolded. Everyone was walking out over empty air at the moment. This would not last forever. If they continued thoughtlessly floating up there, every last light in this nightscape would crash down to the bottom of the cliff.
Oh, look over there, detective. Looks like they’re already preparing for the night illumination parade. That’s a little ahead of schedule.”
“How long until ‘today’ ends, dammit?”
“Ah ha ha! Don’t worry, don’t worry. I made sure to reserve us a room at the park hotel. We can go right to bed after the parade’s over. Tomorrow should be fun too. In fact, tonight should lots of fun☆”
“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What did you just say?”
I nearly choked.
It was true the amusement park had a luxury hotel run by the same brand. I could see it from the Ferris wheel. Its wall had become a giant screen, presumably using projection mapping to work around the uneven surface.
But that wasn’t the issue.
I gave the Mystery Freak a look that said “you understand, don’t you?” and she twisted around on my lap to look at me and nod.
“Eh? Oh, c’mon. Don’t look so worried. It’ll all be fine. I of course reserved a single room with a double bed.”
“That wasn’t what I meant! And a double bed only makes it worse!! And how did a middle school girl reserve a room like that!? That hotel is dangerous!!”
“Everyone holds the power of money thanks to the unprecedented bond magic. The hotel is receiving so many requests they can’t do a detailed check on each and every one.”
That was probably why no one had taken issue with a man in a suit and coat walking around an amusement park with a middle school girl in a swimsuit…no, with a ribbon wrapped around her body and a coat and miniskirt that didn’t do much to help. The police and the rest of the government had shut their doors, so I could only pray there weren’t any actual moral hazards popping up.
“Regardless, that isn’t happening! You never said anything about a hotel and I only promised to go on a single amusement park date with you if we escaped that zombie outbreak. Just one! That doesn’t give you a second day!!”
“Eh? But doesn’t it count as just the once as long as we don’t leave the park?”
“Don’t tell me you’re planning to confine me here and live in the hotel!”
“Hm? Wait… That’s not a bad idea.”
“Oh, no. Now I’m giving you ideas? But anyway, we can’t do that!!”
“But detective, won’t you be in trouble without the hotel?”
“Why? The last train hasn’t left yet.”
“But.”
The twintail girl raised a finger while relaxing on my lap.
“Do you have the money needed to ride the train?”
Huh?
Don’t tell me!
“It’s gone, dammit! My wallet is gone! Mystery Freak, when did you take it!?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Grin, grin. Not a single clue. Smirk, smirk.”
“I bought that hot coffee just before boarding the Ferris wheel, so it had to be after that. It must have been after we got in here. But where is it? And when did you take it?”
“See? Without any change or your IC card, there’s nothing you can do. Even if we’re just a little out of Tokyo, it’ll be tough getting back to your apartment in Ochanomizu on foot. Right, right?”
“…”
“Oh, or…”
She smiled.
While sitting on my lap, the Mystery Freak lifted her head to look back at me. She looked me in the eye with her head upside-down to mine and tried to provoke me.
“Do you have the courage to feel up my body to find your lost wallet in this ribbon, coat, or miniskirt?”
“I can’t believe you!!”
“Wahyah!? I didn’t think you’d actually stick your hand in there! Now my heart’s pounding! Ah ha ha! That tickles! Nya ha ha ha ha!!”
I would rather not describe this in much detail, but it was necessary for my search. Let’s just say I somehow managed to get my wallet back after a hard struggle.
And it frightens me that she would hide it there of all places…
“Tch. I thought I could get you to pay for the answer with a kiss. I certainly didn’t expect for you to go the brute force route right off the bat. Detective, when you play room escape games, are you the kind of person that ignores the code in the hint and just goes through every option on the dial?”
She pouted her lips, but she still seemed to be enjoying herself.
As she sat in my lap and had me hold her in my arms from behind, she suddenly spoke up.
“To be honest, I didn’t think it would turn out like this.”
“Yeah, I’ve gotta say I’m pretty surprised to find myself on an amusement park date with a middle school girl.”
“C’mon, I didn’t mean that.”
She cutely kicked her legs.
“I wasn’t actually serious.”
A strange silence fell over the Ferris wheel.
That had been a decisive statement, even if it was something I had already known.
“Oh, but I wasn’t deceiving you or anything. Hishigami Enbi really did love Uchimaku Hayabusa. But it was just like a preschooler saying he’s going to marry his teacher. I didn’t think it could ever actually happen. No matter how serious I was, I thought you’d just humor me and rub my head and that would be the end of it. It’s like having your feelings of love dismissed as fake as soon as you confess, but you still don’t want to lie to the person you love and you don’t really mind. That was all it was. No, that was all it should have been.”
“Wait, why did you just correct yourself?”
“But why is it? Since I knew it would never work out, I used you as practice and sent my best shots your way, but then everything seemed to change. That wall began to wobble. I mean, c’mon. If you do that, I’ll start to get serious. Once you tell me I can actually knock over the wall, I’m gonna tackle it with everything I’ve got, break it down, and keep going!! To think we’d go from a zombie outbreak to an amusement park date! I can’t believe this! Oh, I can’t stop blushing!!”
“I’m not sure I get this, but why do I feel like you’re going to ignore the rules and send in a marriage registration form for us? Also it has not changed! Everything has not changed! This is only a ceremony to purify myself after letting my careless feelings and the mood get the better of me during those extreme circumstances!!”
The Mystery Freak leaned back against me.
That seemed to be her way of telling me to pipe down.
“It has changed,” she said.
“What has? And where?”
“The Glass House. That awful case where we first met. Compare us to back then and we’ve changed more than 3.5 billion years of evolution.”
“…”
For an instant, I thought Enbi’s reflection in the window had changed to that girl who had felt like a worn-down rusty blade.
I shook my head to clear away the sentimental hallucination and spoke to the girl on my lap.
“That’s not fair.”
“This is a struggle between a girl and a guy. When the guy I’ve fallen for is on the verge of wavering, I’m gonna use whatever I can.”
She giggled and pressed her head against me so I could smell her hair.
“Do you remember all that properly? How about we have a bit of a review?”
“You sound like a woman on her anniversary grilling her husband about where they went on their first date.”
“Bwefh!! N-now you’re the now getting ahead of yourself here!!”
She choked a little, but then began her questioning while kicking her feet.
“The Glass House was an eerie mansion built on a privately-owned mountain not too far from the city. Now, what was that mansion’s most notable feature?”
“All the inner walls, floors, ceilings, and doors were made of transparent reinforced glass. That insane space of zero privacy was a physical representation of the family’s insistence that there were no secrets between family. So what was their occupation?”
It had turned into a quiz tournament for some reason.
The Mystery Freak readily answered as if it had happened just yesterday.
“Fortune telling with a specialization in major clients such as politicians and corporation executives. That’s why they were so picky about the truth and secrets. Okay, detective, how many people ultimately died in that case?”
“Three. One was the planned locked room murder, one was an irregular death of someone who had found some evidence, and the third was disguised as a suicide to frame them. Mystery Freak, who was the murderer?”
“The family’s young wife. And the murder weapon?”
“A crossbow. But the bolt was sometimes fired from the crossbow and sometimes held and stabbed into the victim. Let’s see… Who was the butler with the seemingly meaningful bandages over his face?”
“A normal butler whose wound had long since healed but mistakenly believed everyone was treating him nicely because of it. How many shower scenes were there with the maid?”
“Six. …No, one was the young wife and one was that girl in the wheelchair, so I guess only four.”
“Why do you remember that so accurately!?”
“Isn’t that the point of this quiz!?”
We took a short break.
Afterwards, the Mystery Freak continued for us.
“Pant, pant. So what was the trick behind the first murder? All the walls were transparent, so everyone should have been able to see it happen.”
“The position of the furniture in each room. Each one was only a lamp or dresser, but altogether they created a perfect wall. By placing a piece of that wall in each room between the living room and the murder room, she hid the scene behind a special blind. Now, what was the young wife’s motive?”
“She was a second wife and did not fit into the family very well. As fortune tellers, the family was vehemently opposed to secrets and tried to bring everyone together like that. Now, now. The real question: how did your Enbi-chan solve it all?”
“Well…”
I looked up at the ceiling with the Mystery Freak on my lap.
This had happened after the murderer had shot me in the side with the crossbow.
“You were so pissed you destroyed the entire Glass House. The young wife was caught in a shower of glass and was nearly killed, scarily enough.”
“And that’s when my love was born! Oh, I really can’t stop blushing! Ah!!”
Her small butt rose up from my lap.
Something that left me unsure where to look appeared right in front of my face, but the Mystery Freak did not seem to mind. In fact, it might have been on purpose. At any rate, she was looking out the window.
“There’s an orange-glowing carriage in the night illumination parade they’re getting ready… It looks like we’re getting that rare float that’s rumored to only appear once every ten times! If two people take a photo together with that in the background, they’re supposed to fall in love!!”
“If they’re in a position to be taking a photo together at an amusement park at night, aren’t they probably already in love?”
“Eh heh. So you admit it? You just confessed to your crime, detective!!”
“Please don’t phrase it like that, you idiot!!”
Enbi plopped her butt back down onto its usual spot. She sat in my lap and kicked her feet around while speaking shrilly about what she saw out the window.
I thought to myself as I gently reached around her from behind as if playing the role of her seatbelt.
This country looked happy at first glance, but it was actually…no, the entire world was actually in a dangerous situation. The Mystery Freak had to have noticed that. She wasn’t stupid enough to be utterly oblivious. She had simply chosen to enjoy herself up until the very end.
That was the choice of a dreaming girl.
But she had to know the truth.
This would not last long. This crazy situation where no one knew why they were so happy could not last. It was like a passenger plane continuing to fly without the pilot. No matter how comfortable it was, you couldn’t just enjoy it forever. Once the weather worsened and you hit some turbulence or once the warning light next to the fuel meter came on, it was all over.
After the Ferris wheel finished is twenty five minute circuit, we returned to the surface.
“What should we do? Stick up a ‘we’re busy’ sign and enjoy another circuit?”
“I don’t think that’s an option.”
With that said, I lowered her small body from my lap.
She looked dissatisfied, but I opened the door from within.
I found a familiar face there.
His suit and coat were similar to mine, but he was fundamentally different. That rich black-haired bachelor made me wonder just how one acquired that kind of style.
It was Chief Superintendent Mishima.
“Hi, Uchimaku-kun. If you still have some sense of societal duty left inside you, could we maybe talk about work?”
Our living dream was over.
Now, it’s time for that mental exercise you love so much, Mystery Freak.
Let’s try thinking about global ruin.
Part 2
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