Having woken up unusually early, we wasted no time checking out of the hotel after we got back. I asked Siesta if we were heading for the next observation point, but she told me, “There’s someone I need to see for a bit.”
It was actually pretty nostalgic the way she kept me in the dark and moved things along by herself. We came down from the mountains in a car driven by a Man in Black, then headed southwest.
“Is this person an enemy or an ally?”
“Mm. I really couldn’t say,” Siesta answered with a frown, sitting in the back seat. It sounded like I’d need to psych myself up a little before we got there.
“By the way, Kimi, do you have travel insurance?”
“Don’t ask something scary like that.”
“Make sure to tell your loved ones how you feel about them.”
“Seriously, where are you taking me?!”
After traveling for over ten hours, including multiple breaks, we reached a town near the nation’s border. It was a suburban area with hardly any high-rises. The car stopped in front of one particular run-down building.
“This seems like a pretty dangerous town. The buildings and streets are riddled with bullet holes.”
“Even if there are no more major enemies of the world, that doesn’t mean human malice and violence have disappeared. The world isn’t peaceful or anything like it yet. …Anyway, shall we go?” Siesta opened the trunk and took out a silver attaché case. It went without saying what was inside. I grabbed my backpack and followed Siesta into the building.
It was a tiny clinic, which meant I could pretty much guess who Siesta was here to see. We found him in an exam room, typing on a keyboard.
“Stephen.”
Since I’d recently revisited my memories of the past, it felt as if I’d talked to him just the other day, but it had actually been about a month since we last met. Stephen had been secretly helping Bruno amidst the Ritual of Sacred Return, during which he, the Revolutionary, and the Hero had made contact with me.
“Do you still have the origin text?” Stephen asked, his hands falling still. It was just like last time: He’d tried to get that book from me to shut down the ritual.
“You’re still after this, even now?” I took the origin text out of my bag. I’d been carrying it around with me ever since that day. It was a mysterious book that showed me the future only when a major choice was bearing down on us. I’d received it directly from Mia the Oracle, the original owner.
“Assistant, give that to Stephen,” Siesta prompted me unexpectedly.
“…You’re sure?”
“That was his condition for agreeing to meet today.”
Good grief. When had they cut that deal? I didn’t have much of a choice, so I handed over the origin text. Stephen examined it closely, but of course, the book showed no sign of activating its power.
“I mean, it doesn’t even react when I touch it.”
I’d only borrowed its power once, and it had never worked after that. I’d honestly been thinking it was about time I gave it back to Mia.
“It may have carried out its primary role already,” Siesta said.
“Then its purpose was to return the Singularity’s rightful power to him?” Stephen asked. “Seeing the future must have been a secondary, incidental effect.”
Come to think of it, way back when Rill and I had been dealing with a crisis known as Pandemonium, a bizarre creature known as the White Tengu had appeared. It had told us that the world held several devices for recording the past and the future. The Sacred Relics had been such artifacts, but maybe the origin text was another one.
“Now then, Daydream. Why have you come to see me?” Handing the origin text back to me, Stephen got down to business.
Siesta drew a small breath. “Actually, I’d like to ask you a similar question: What are you doing here, Stephen?”
This was a tiny clinic in a foreign country—all he could be doing here was working as a doctor. Stephen saved the lives of many people all around the world, disregarding national borders. However, that probably wasn’t what Siesta was asking.
“You were Bruno’s comrade,” Siesta went on. “The Assassin inherited his last will, just like you, and she’s been working to retake the world’s lost records. She’s still trying to contact the people at the top. So what are you doing?”
Stephen’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses.
“What about the Revolutionary and the Hero? What are you all doing? —Or maybe the question I should be asking is what have you really been trying to do?”
Siesta seemed to be insinuating that Stephen and Bruno’s other allies had some sort of special plan, and that it had already ended in failure.
“That’s a bad habit among detectives: You self-importantly withhold the conclusion you’ve already come to and list off facts in an attempt to defuse any problems. It’s an abysmal waste of time.” The doctor—a man who lived by the principle of efficiency—turned back to the electronic patient file on his computer.
“He’s talking smack about you, Siesta.”
“That’s quite all right. If someone can’t understand the romance of being a detective, nothing else they do is bound to work out, either.”
Her expression was deadpan, but she was insanely mad.
Technically, this doctor saved your life, you know…
“Then I’ll ask for him,” I said, cutting in. “What are you getting at, Siesta? What do you think the Inventor, the Revolutionary, and the Hero were plotting?”
As the assistant, I smoothed things over. Siesta nodded, then presented a theory I’d never even suspected. “After Bruno’s death, the three of you tried to acquire the Akashic records. You made it look as if you’d inherited his will but were actually taking advantage of the fact that everyone around the world had forgotten about the records.”
Stephen didn’t speak. But he was listening.