After parting with Mia, Saikawa, and Charlie at the airport, Nagisa and I flew to France. From there, we boarded the train to the area that was predicted to be the epicenter of the Great Cataclysm.
There weren’t many passengers, but we sat side by side in a two-person seat.
Nagisa seemed tired; she was starting to nod off. It was around nine in the evening. For today, once we got to our destination, we’d probably head straight to our hotel and rest.
“So the big event starts tomorrow, huh?”
We were definitely going to have to fight Abel one more time. At which point, we’d probably need the power of the Singularity.
I’d once unlocked a door that led to Abel and managed to pin him down temporarily using a power even I couldn’t explain that well. …How had that been possible, though? What exactly was “the Singularity”?
I’d been told it was the power to shift the world’s axis.
That it was this super-convenient thing that would make my subconscious wishes come true.
Did I actually have the ability to do something like that? If so, it seemed weird that I’d spent my life constantly getting dragged into unfair situations like this.
…Or should I be looking at it the other way around? That I’d only run into all this unfairness so I could work a once-in-a-lifetime miracle? In that case, would I have to allow for a little unfairness in my everyday life? That seemed like just the sort of logic I needed to convince myself.
“What do you think, Nagisa?”
What exactly was the role of the Singularity? Who was this person called Kimihiko Kimizuka?
Nagisa didn’t respond. She was asleep, breathing peacefully, her head slumped on my shoulder. With a wry smile, I reached out toward her but stopped myself short.
How long had it been since I’d gotten such a close look at Nagisa’s face? Those long eyelashes, that smooth skin. My gaze was unintentionally drawn to her lips, which were painted a sophisticated shade.
“…Staring like this probably isn’t a great move,” I murmured to myself.
Even I didn’t think I’d be able to talk my way out of that one. I dragged my eyes away, focusing straight ahead.
Come to think of it, that guy had said something about this to me before. Professor Moriya, who’d turned out to be Abel in disguise, had told me I actually felt close to Nagisa Natsunagi.
“Well, of course I do.”
I’d say that as often as anybody wanted, even without the hypnosis. Just how much had she given me anyway? And how much of that had I not repaid her for yet? Until the day those two things balanced out, at the very least, I had no intention of leaving Nagisa.
…As her business partner. I felt a little guilty about adding that convenient phrase, but that was the conclusion I’d come to.
“I’ll be relying on you,” I told the sleeping Nagisa, before overcoming my earlier hesitation and gently stroking her hair.
I didn’t mean anything big by it. It was just a gesture of appreciation.
As I was telling myself that and patting Nagisa’s head, her face flushed redder and redder, and her closed lips began to twitch restlessly. …I see. That means—
“You should’ve told me sooner if you were awake!”
“B—but…!”
For both our sakes, I wasn’t going to ask her when she’d started pretending to be asleep.
“Okay, we’re going to have a serious discussion, starting now.”
“Huh?! This sweet situation’s over already?! You’ve got to be kidding.” Nagisa gave me a disbelieving look, but no matter how much she pleaded, it was over.
“…Meanie.” Nagisa sighed, but she did understand how urgent this was. “You mean you want to talk about Abel, right?” she said, promptly switching gears. “You met him before, didn’t you, Kimihiko? What did you think? Be honest.”
“What did I think…? That’s pretty vague.”
“But it’s important to know our enemy, isn’t it?”
She had a point. And the truth was that we knew hardly anything about him. An ostentatious title like “the world’s most heinous criminal” didn’t tell us a thing about his real nature.
Protecting the world was fine, and of course we were going to save our friend. However, if we were going to do either of those things, it was vital that we understood the barrier that was blocking our path.
“I think I told you this before, but Abel said his objective was to create a better world.”
He’d stolen the Akashic records and completely taken control of the world with his codes, all for the sake of that ideal.
“It really is weird, though,” I continued. “He’s trying to create a world without evil or sin, but practically all he does is plan crimes. His words and actions contradict each other.”
“Yes, I think so, too. However, it did sound like Abel thinks there are no truly innocent people in the world, so he probably sees this as an arbitrary form of punishment against them.”
“…I see. A necessary evil in the service of creating an ideal world, huh?”
Of course, there was no way Abel was telling us everything he felt. We probably still had a lot to learn about him. Why was he so fixated on evil and sin? Why try to remake this world into a utopia?
“Personally, I think there are two layers to his motive.” Nagisa held up two fingers. “Let’s say I want to kill you, for example.”
“That’s an extremely nasty hypothetical. …So? What’s your motive?”
“I love you so much that I don’t want some other woman to take you.”
“Don’t say something terrifying like that with a straight face. This is just a hypothetical, right?”
Still, I got what Nagisa was trying to say. That was probably the first layer of the motive.
“And here’s the second layer,” she continued. “Why did I end up loving you so much I want to kill you?”
“I see. You mean that second question is the most important part of the motive?”
“Right. It’s the one that’s closest to the unconscious mind.”
Basically, Nagisa was trying to say that there might be a second layer to Abel’s motive for trying to remake the world, so we shouldn’t just slap a label on him like he’s doing it because he was born evil.
“By the way, what made you fall for me hard enough to want to kill me?”
“I—I told you that was only a hypothetical. Say any more than that and I’ll double-kill you!”
“This makes that line take on a different meaning, too. You’re double-killing me because you love me twice as much.”
“Look, would you just behave and focus on being an oblivious sort of protagonist?!” Nagisa said, clutching her head. It didn’t seem to make much sense—wasn’t it better for a detective’s assistant to be quick on the uptake rather than oblivious?—but I decided not to push it.
“Sorry, my bad. You’re right; we were talking about Abel.”
Why was he maintaining his position as the world’s worst criminal?
“Why don’t we think about it in terms of a ‘whydunit’?”
It was one of the patterns a mystery novel could take. A story that focused on who was the criminal was a “whodunit,” one that focused on how the crime was committed was a “howdunit,” while if the mystery centered around why the crime had been done, it was called a “whydunit.”
The former Ace Detective, Siesta, had tended to focus on the who and how: Who had perpetrated the crime, and how had they done it? She hadn’t seemed to consider the why of the crime, the criminal’s motive, to be all that important. She’d been a little awkward at picking up on other people’s emotions.
On the other hand, there was another Ace Detective who excelled at that: Nagisa Natsunagi. She was extremely passionate and always sensitive of the emotions of those around her. Now she was trying to decipher Abel’s emotions—his will itself.
“Abel’s true motive in plotting crimes, huh? We should have the scope to think about that, for sure.”
“Yes. I’ll try to put my thoughts together a bit,” Nagisa said, stretching.
Why was Abel always causing incidents like these?
It would have been easy to say it was because he was an eccentric criminal. However, he’d once said that his motive was to create a “good world.” The key behind how to think about this contradiction had to be in there somewhere.
“You still don’t understand?”
The air around us changed in an instant. It felt like a sense of wrongness centered around a seat across the aisle from us.
In that seat sat Abel.
“…Professor Moriya,” Nagisa said, her eyes widening.
I tried to get up but quickly realized my legs wouldn’t cooperate. We couldn’t move. He must have hit us with some sort of code.
“A motive? I have nothing of the sort. I am ‘evil’; nothing more, nothing less. Just like you, and like the human race.”
Abel was holding a paperback book. His eyes stayed on it as he spoke. A second later, I caught a glimpse of his profile reflected in the window of the train. He looked like a hollow-cheeked grim reaper.
“Now then. Go, and find your way back.”
Abel snapped his fingers. Immediately, all the other passengers on the train vanished.
“What is this?”
The next thing I knew, Abel had disappeared as well. And what’s more…
“Nagisa?”
This time, she wasn’t pretending to be asleep.
Nagisa fell over onto my lap, as heavy as a corpse.
“Nagisa… Nagisa!
In the blink of an eye, Abel Arsene Schoenberg had stolen the Ace Detective from the Singularity.