“I…am…” Ah. Yes. She finally remembered. Ikuno Hashiguchi. That was her name. And that was also the name of the person who had used the Artifact Changeling to set this case in motion. Indeed. A few months earlier, Ikuno had taken advantage of a long holiday to return home, where she discovered a curious package had been delivered to the house. It was addressed to her late great-grandfather. But there was no return address, so she’d had no choice but to open the package. Inside was a ring with a very strange power. At first, she was astounded. How could something like this exist? She grew afraid and unable to discuss it with anyone, so she put it in a box and tucked it away in her desk. She thought she would never open that box again. But about a month earlier, her “big sister” Anna Matsutani had suddenly started hanging out with one of her classmates. In the beginning, she hadn’t been particularly bothered by it, but then she started to hear ominous rumors everywhere until she could hardly stand it. She asked Anna, then Kaori, but they dodged her questions or changed the subject, which only served to increase her anxiety. The decisive blow came in the form of a phone call from Anna. “Hello? Ikuno?” “…Yes? What is it?” “What do you mean, what? You didn’t notice?” “…?! ‘Notice’? Notice what?” “…Well, whatever. Make time tomorrow. We’ll talk in person.” Then Anna hung up. For a while after the call, Ikuno could only stand there, frozen, phone in hand. What if Anna wanted to cancel their sisterhood? What if Anna said she was taking Kaori as her new little sister? The moment these possibilities flitted through her mind, she suddenly found in her hand the Artifact ring she had decided she would never, ever use. She herself didn’t really understand her motivation. Did she want to punish her beloved Anna for leaving her? Did she want to die with Anna if she was going to lose her anyway? Most likely, it was both, and it was neither. She was so fragile mentally that by the time she felt the pain and pulled her hands out of the basin, the water inside was already dyed bright red. First thing the next morning, she heard the siren of the ambulance that took Anna to the hospital. She had only been able to watch her go in a daze, from a distance. Ikuno sleepwalked through the days that followed. She went to class but simply sat and stared into space the whole day. She was barely present for classes or church. Normally, someone would have reprimanded her, but the situation being what it was, almost none of the other students would approach her. They probably didn’t know what to say. Not when she had those bandages wrapped around her wrists like she was trying to go after Anna. A few days after that, something unexpected happened. The new transfer student in her class started to dig into the suicide attempt. Ikuno hadn’t been especially worried about this at first. She’d used an Artifact in the crime. The transfer student could look into it all she wanted, but she would never be able to trace it back to Ikuno. But when she chanced upon the transfer student’s notebook, she couldn’t help but shiver in fear when she saw what was written: Suspected Artifact involvement. Terror suddenly overtook Ikuno. This girl, this Kurumi Tokisaki, knew about the Artifacts. If she kept investigating, she might figure out Ikuno was behind this. She would discover Ikuno was the one who had hurt Anna. That couldn’t happen. That was the one thing that couldn’t happen. If people found out… If Anna found out… Just the thought was enough to drain the life out of Ikuno. Even after all of this, she couldn’t stop herself from adoring Anna, from loving her so much she could hardly stand it. She knew it was selfish, but she couldn’t handle this terror. So she made up her mind. She would get a piece of Kurumi Tokisaki’s hair and carve wounds into her body just like she had with Anna. She probably wouldn’t die. It would be a warning. A message telling Kurumi to quit sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. She had nothing against Kurumi. But she could not allow the truth to get out. One evening, having transformed to look like Kurumi, Ikuno steeled herself and picked up the knife. “…Ah…” She remembered everything up to that point. But then she fell unconscious as Kurumi, and her memory grew hazy. “So you remember now,” the Kurumi sitting on the chair—the real Kurumi Tokisaki—said quietly. There was no sign of any injury on her wrists. To Ikuno, this girl, who now looked identical to her, was more frightening than any monster. “Ah. Ah. Ah…” She spotted something with a dull shine under the bed and reached out a hand. It was a small knife. Most likely, it had tumbled under the bed when she’d passed out in Kurumi’s form. “Ikuno!” The other girls no doubt realized what it was that Ikuno now held. Kurumi’s eyebrows jumped up, and Matsurika cried out to stop her. “Aaah!” But Ikuno could no longer control herself. Spurred on by this wild impulse, Ikuno turned the tip of the knife toward herself and plunged it into her own stomach. She suddenly felt a sharp pain in her abdomen and watched as a flower of blood bloomed. Or so she expected. “Huh…?” She opened her eyes wide and stared at her stomach. There wasn’t so much as a scratch. “How…?” She looked at the knife closely and found that the blade had retracted into the handle on a spring mechanism. It was a toy, albeit a cleverly realistic-looking one. “It was a good call to switch the knives out, hmm?” Kurumi remarked. “Still, I never imagined she would suddenly try to stab herself in the stomach.” “…Well, I can understand where she’s coming from. She was ambushed in her own room by her doppelgänger, and meanwhile, she hardly had any memory of what was going on,” Matsurika said with a wry smile. “Yes.” Kurumi nodded. “When you put it like that, I suppose it is understandable. I’m more than accustomed to many people having my face, so I didn’t pay it any mind myself.” “…?” Matsurika eyed her curiously. “Do you have a great number of sisters?” “Something like that,” Kurumi replied with a shrug. The lighthearted conversation bewildered Ikuno. She dropped the toy knife to the floor and slowly lifted her face. “Why…? How exactly…did you…?” The halting query spilled forth. Kurumi understood what she was trying to ask. “It didn’t take me long to hypothesize that the Artifact in question here was Changeling,” she said, standing up slowly. “Along with the possibility that I would be attacked with it. “Thus, I went ahead and took certain measures in preparation for such an eventuality. It’s true that any wounds you incurred while transformed with Changeling would indeed appear on my own body as well. However, you mustn’t forget that the power of Changeling is a sharing of the senses. It is most certainly not a one-way street. Damage my body incurs is also shared with you.” “Wha…?!” Ikuno’s eyes grew wide. Kurumi stroked her own neck with a slender fingertip. “The moment I felt the knife touch my wrist, I had Matsurika press down on my carotid arteries to sever my consciousness temporarily. This does place a serious burden on the body, so please don’t try this at home, hmm?” Kurumi said. Who exactly was she warning, though? “So…” Ikuno groaned. “My hazy memories are your doing…?” “Of course not!” Kurumi cried. “Please. I can’t be held responsible for every little thing. The mind affects the body. It’s only natural that a body unaccustomed to the use of the Artifact would have its sense of self shaken when taking on the form of several different people within a short time frame… Although I cannot deny the possibility that the forced interruption of your consciousness was the trigger,” she added quickly and quietly. “…So you knew everything, too, Miss Sukarabe?” Ikuno said, glaring at Matsurika standing behind Kurumi. “I did indeed!” Matsurika puffed her chest out in smug satisfaction. “Incidentally, the theories she presented to you earlier were more or less my concoctions,” Kurumi noted. “Y-you didn’t need to go out of your way to tell her that!” Sweat beaded on Matsurika’s forehead, and Kurumi chuckled. Ikuno did not have the presence of mind to laugh at this. Still glaring at Kurumi, she opened her mouth again. “…Who are you?” “Oh, yes, right.” Kurumi shrugged. “I am an Artifact crime detective.” “…You mean you’re here to arrest me?” Ikuno said. “No. My objective is the recovery of the Artifact. While what you have done might indeed be unforgivable, I have no authority to pass judgment on you.” “…Then why not recover this right away instead of letting me flounder?” Ikuno raised her left hand as she spoke. She wore an old ring on her pinkie finger. She hadn’t understood the meaning of it at first, but now that she had her memory back, she knew. This was the Artifact Changeling. Kurumi narrowed her eyes sharply. “I thought I would have you discover the truth of the incident yourself.” “The truth of the incident…?” Ikuno scowled. “Now that I remember everything, there’s nothing to discover, is there? Or were you trying to make me feel the weight of my crime?” “Who can say? You may be the perpetrator, but that doesn’t mean you know everything about the circumstances, now does it?” “…Meaning?” Ikuno asked, suspiciously. “You thought Anna was about to cancel your sisterhood,” Kurumi continued calmly. “But was that really the case? What was Anna speaking to Kaori about? Why did Anna return to the dorm from the west building, not the east building, on that day?” “Huh…?” Ikuno frowned, and Kurumi handed her a long, thin box. She looked down at it, then back up to Kurumi. “What’s this?” “Forgive my rudeness, but I took it from your desk.” Indeed. Ikuno had seen this box before. It had been in her desk when she’d sat down that morning. It was wrapped in pink paper and decorated with a ribbon. Because she’d been convinced she was Kurumi, she hadn’t given it any real thought. Yet, seeing it now when she had regained her memory, she still had no idea what it was. “No way.” Ikuno gasped, removed the wrapping paper, and opened the box. Inside was a pretty accessory and a little note card that said “Happy Anniversary” in Anna’s handwriting. Ikuno opened her eyes wide in surprise. Right. The day of the incident. It had been exactly one year since she and Anna had become sisters. “Hah. Ah…” Her voice shook, and then with a wail, Ikuno crumpled to the floor. Anna hadn’t wanted to cancel their sisterhood. Kaori hadn’t betrayed her. All of it had been Ikuno tilting at windmills, jerked around by baseless rumors. For that selfish reason, Ikuno had hurt her beloved Anna. Regret and despair filled her heart. She pounded on the floor and sobbed. “If you hadn’t possessed the Artifact, this incident would never have happened. You might have spent another night in anxious pain, but the misunderstanding would have been cleared up the very next day.” Kurumi sighed at length. “The legend that serves as the basis for the Artifact Changeling was an allegory from a time of high infant mortality—that’s one theory. It allowed the parent to believe it wasn’t their own child who had died but rather the fairy child, and their real child was alive and well in the land of the fairies. To think Changeling would be involved in an incident like this based on a mistaken, sad assumption… It’s ironic really.” Kurumi stepped over to the stunned Ikuno and slipped the ring off her pinkie finger. In the next instant, Ikuno transformed from Kurumi’s identical twin into a totally different person. Chestnut brown hair, cheeks with a smattering of freckles. The real Ikuno Hashiguchi. “Ah.” She gasped. “You are free to do as you please,” Kurumi told her. “If you cannot forgive yourself, then I will not stop you from attempting to harm yourself again. But before you do, please think for just a moment about how sad it would make Anna.” “Ah. Hah. Agh…” Tears spilled from her eyes, leaving dark spots on the floor. Kurumi stood up and left with the parting words, “Well then, take care.” “Another case closed, and still no leads on the Artifact thief.” A few days later, at the Tokisaki Detective Agency located on the second floor of a mixed-use building in front of the station, Kurumi took a sip of her tea and let out a warmed sigh. Indeed. Recovering Changeling was all fine and dandy, but it had come to Ikuno Hashiguchi via yet another mysterious package. “It’s quite curious,” she said with a slight shrug. “If they were only going to randomly send out the Artifacts they worked so hard to obtain, then what exactly was the goal in raiding the Sukarabe storehouse in the first place?” Sitting on the sofa across from her, Matsurika placed a thoughtful hand on her chin. “Perhaps they are attempting to create a chaotic world filled with Artifact crimes!” “That is the thinking of a cheap villain.” There was an annoyed tone to Kurumi’s voice, and Matsurika leaned back into the sofa, stunned slightly. “Whatever the culprit’s intent, the fact that they scattered the Artifacts like this is quite the bother. We only stumbled upon this case because of the victim’s testimony that she saw an identical copy of herself. If that hadn’t happened, the case might have slipped right past us without us even harboring the slightest misgiving.” “Oh!” Matsurika raised her eyebrows as though she had just remembered something. “That reminds me, Kurumi. About that case.” “Were there more details?” “Yes. Anna Matsutani was later released from the hospital and safely reunited with Ikuno. The misunderstanding with Kaori was also resolved.” “Hmm. Is that right?” “My goodness! You’re downright icy. I know it was only for a brief time, but you were a student there.” “If I get emotionally attached each and every time I go undercover, there’ll be no end,” Kurumi said coolly, and Matsurika flashed a mocking grin. “Oh-hoh. Is that riiight?” Matsurika’s expression said, “You say all that, yet you seemed quite involved.” Kurumi glared hard at Matsurika. “What?” “Oh no!” Matsurika waved a hand prettily. “It’s nothing—really.” She had no doubt determined she didn’t want to deal with the blowback of pushing any further. She changed the subject. “Still, I was surprised.” “By?” Kurumi said. “Oh, at your daring to go undercover as a student when I suggested the strategy.” “Pffft!” Kurumi scoffed at Matsurika’s words. “And, well, we are in university,” Matsurika continued. “We were wearing uniforms ourselves not too long ago, so there wasn’t that much of a disconnect.” “Please wait just a moment,” Kurumi demanded. “Kindly wipe that look off your face. You think I chose to be a student because I wanted to wear a uniform, huh? Anyone would assume they would be going undercover as a student when they heard they were infiltrating a school.” “Whaaat? I’m not so sure,” Matsurika replied, quite obviously enjoying this from the bottom of her heart. “I had intended to propose we go undercover as student teachers.” “…” A vein on Kurumi’s forehead began to visibly throb, but she made an effort to plaster on a gentle smile. “Matsurika. Changeling is in the usual storage space, yes?” “Hmm?” Matsurika raised an eyebrow. “Oh, yes, it is. And?” Kurumi grinned. “I’m just going to borrow a strand of your hair.” “Ah! What are you planning to do?!” Matsurika leaped up from the sofa and started running.
Chapter 10
14 min read