“The meal?” Kurumi glared at the server witheringly. “Did you just say meal? Is this what passes for a meal here?! Simply unbelievable! I demand to speak with the chef!” “Pl-please calm down,” the server begged. “You’re disturbing the other—” “You got a problem with my cooking?” a voice echoed out from the back of the restaurant. Kurumi turned and saw a girl wearing a chef jacket standing in front of the kitchen door. It was the owner and chef of Nid de Pigeon, Hatoko Mikuriya. She sounded calm, but her face was severe. The disparagement of her prized cooking had clearly struck a nerve. And of course it was. Kurumi could tell easily from just this one dish that Hatoko was extraordinarily particular about her cooking. And it was now being spat on before the whole world. Her anger was to be expected. Hatoko’s appearance only made the customers’ chatter grow louder. It seemed that more than a few of them were seeing the chef for the first time. Admiring sighs mixed with the clamor. “…” Hatoko frowned as though she disliked the increasing volume and jerked her chin at the server. “Kinue. Take this guest upstairs. I’ll speak with her myself.” “Wh-what?” Kinue stammered. “Are you sure?” “Yeah, don’t worry. Easy enough to throw her out, but I don’t need the bad publicity. Let me handle this.” She flashed the antiquated sideways peace sign and disappeared behind the door. The server was momentarily bewildered, but eventually, she turned to Kurumi. “Th-this way, please…” “Hmph. I suppose I could hear what the chef has to say for herself. Come along, Matsurika,” Kurumi said, the look of anger still on her face, and cut across the hall after the server. A heartbeat later, Matsurika trailed after her. “R-right!” “…Umm, Kurumi? Where did that come from?” Matsurika asked, her voice low as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. “…” Kurumi maintained her silence and moved forward toward the door at the end of the hall. “Ma’am, I brought the customers as you asked,” Kinue said as she knocked hesitantly on the door. “’Kay. Bring ’em in. Kinue, you go back to work,” Hatoko spoke through the door. It seemed she had arrived before them. “W-well, please go ahead…” Kinue stepped aside and opened the door for Kurumi and Matsurika. “Thank you.” Kurumi held her head high and stepped inside with Matsurika behind her, seemingly hiding in her shadow. The space looked to be Hatoko’s personal office and meeting space. The desk toward the back was covered in papers, and the display case against the wall held a number of trophies and awards. And in front of this, Hatoko stood with her arms crossed, not bothering to hide her displeasure. “So? What’s your deal?” she demanded, annoyed, as she took off her chef’s hat and tossed it on the desk. “My ‘deal’?” Kurumi parroted. “Yeah. Can we just get on with it? This isn’t my first rodeo. We screen our clientele pretty carefully, but the likes of you do make it through sometimes,” Hatoko said, her gaze sharpening. “You want money? Or did another restaurant hire you to come make a fuss?” “Neither,” Kurumi responded. “Hmm? Then what? You can’t actually be saying you think my cooking’s bad.” “Goodness. I never said anything about it being ‘bad.’” “…Uh?” Hatoko frowned like she didn’t understand what Kurumi meant, and Matsurika opened her eyes wide in surprise. “It was marvelous in its preparation,” Kurumi told her. “I could see the fruits of your diligent study and attention to detail. I cannot criticize your work.” “…I don’t get it.” Hatoko glared at her suspiciously. “You get all bent out of shape for what, then? I gotta ask. You looking to train under me? Or did you want my autograph—?” “Poisoned honey, were I to make an analogy,” Kurumi interrupted. “Or perhaps the cheese in a trap.” “…!” Hatoko’s eyebrows jumped up, and Kurumi was sure. She yanked off the mask and snapped a finger out at the chef. “It has come time to solve this case. Hatoko Mikuriya, I’ll ask you to hand over the Artifact.” “Wha—?!” Hatoko stared in wide-eyed surprise. Her shock could have come from the revelation that the customer was actually until recently her employee Kurumi, but it also looked like bewilderment at Kurumi’s knowledge of the Artifact. That moment’s hesitation proved fatal. “Hah!” Kurumi kicked at the floor, her dress swinging around her, and instantly closed in on Hatoko. She twisted the woman’s arm behind her back and pinned her to the floor. “Aaah?!” Hatoko cried. “Wh-what are you—?!” “Matsurika!” Kurumi called. “Please look for the Artifact! Given that she uses it in her cooking, it must be hidden somewhere nearby!” “Uh…?! Ah!” Matsurika gasped, her shoulders jumping up. “K-Kurumi! Did you actually learn something from the food?!” “…Is that not obvious?” Kurumi scowled, sweat beading on her forehead. “Did you think I was actually angry about the meal and here to lodge a complaint?” “Oh? Well, ha-ha…” Matsurika plastered a weak smile on her face as her eyes looked anywhere but at Kurumi. Kurumi sighed heavily. “…It doesn’t matter. Please find the Artifact. She might have hidden it in her clothing.” “R-right!” Matsurika raced over, got down on her knees, and began to search the pockets of Hatoko’s chef jacket. “Ugh…!” Hatoko wriggled. “Your get-rich-quick scheme ends here!” Matsurika cried shrilly. “It’s pointless to resist. Please return the Nectar immediately!” “No.” Kurumi shook her head slowly. “You’ve got it wrong, Matsurika.” “I’ve got it wrong?” Matsurika looked at her curiously. Still holding Hatoko’s arm down, Kurumi continued. “The Artifact she possesses is most likely not the Nectar.” “Not Nectar? W-wait just a moment. You felt it, too, didn’t you, Kurumi? That sensation as though power were rising up from inside your body? If it wasn’t the Nectar, then—” “Vampyre,” Kurumi interrupted, narrowing her eyes. “What…?” Matsurika squeaked. “I’m quite sure an Artifact with that name was listed in the register,” Kurumi told her. “A very dangerous article which absorbs the vitality of others. And even if it is not that particular item, I would assume she is using an Artifact with a similar power.” “Wh-what do you mean?” Matsurika furrowed her brow, puzzled. “Absorbs vitality…?” “Yes.” Kurumi continued. “That was no rejuvenation menu. It was magical, poisoned bait to suck the vitality out of those who eat it. Continuing to consume that meal would eventually lead to death.” “W-wait just a moment!” Matsurika cried. “I don’t understand! I actually feel livelier! And that actor regained her youth, too!” “Likely a side effect of vitality being sucked from the depths of your body,” Kurumi explained. “I would assume that, as a result of your life force being drawn out, you regain a sheen of youthfulness. But this is simply the abnormal consumption of your own life force. To put it another way, imagine batteries connected in parallel being reconnected in series—nothing more than an advance paid against the remainder of your life. The only one who becomes youthful again in a real sense is you, isn’t it, Hatoko?” “…” Hatoko showed neither assent nor denial. “…You feed your customers meals prepared with this Artifact, and you absorb their life force bit by bit—quite the service fee,” Kurumi continued quietly. “Customers temporarily regain their youth and, not realizing it’s their own life being consumed, they pay that enormous sum of money and come to sit on your plate once again. “I don’t know if you deliberately set it up like that or if it simply happened to settle into this pattern, but either way, it’s an evil, unscrupulous system. Ah… The real ‘rejuvenation menu’ was the very customers in the hall.” “Haaah.” Hatoko exhaled at length, still pinned to the floor. “…You really know your stuff, huh? Who even are you?” She decided to drop the act. “I am no one particularly important,” Kurumi told her. “At the moment, I’m a mere university student and—” “This person before you is the great Artifact crime detective Kurumi Tokisaki!” Matsurika cried suddenly. “Matsurika. Would you be quiet for a moment?” Kurumi said, exasperated. “I see. So that’s it.” A lifeless smile rose up on Hatoko’s face. “Artifact crime detective, huh? Well, the Artifacts exist. Guess it’s maybe no surprise they’d have a detective, too. “But even if, like, you hit the nail on the head, what crime exactly are you gonna arrest me for? You can go on and on about how terrible I am, but I bet I’d still have swarms of people coming to the restaurant even if I did tell them the truth, y’know? As long as they get to spend the rest of their lives in a young body, they don’t care how short it is. That’s just how appealing youth is. Or are you gonna get all hero complex on me and be like, ‘Not on my watch,’ even if it’s what the customers want?” “…You mustn’t get the wrong idea,” Kurumi told her. “Oh-hoh?” Hatoko stared up at her curiously. “I have no intention of making myself out to be the hero. I’m the villain whose interests simply do not align with yours.” “Heh-heh-heh!” Hatoko chuckled. “I get it. Well, my mistake. But still, I mean…” “Hngh?!” Kurumi felt a prickly pain in her hand and scowled. She was drained of her strength and loosened her grip on Hatoko. “Ha-ha! You knew I had an Artifact, and yet you thought you could restrain me like this?” Hatoko sneered. “There’s carelessness, and then there’s just plain idiocy!” She had stabbed Kurumi’s hand with the knife hidden in her chef’s jacket. The injury itself was nothing major. And yet Kurumi found herself majorly damaged. Her limbs refused to move as she commanded, and she nearly collapsed on the spot. Free of her restraint, Hatoko pulled the knife out of her jacket and brandished it at Kurumi. “—!” Kurumi gasped as her kinetic vision caught sight of the bladed object. The kitchen knife. The one she’d been holding when Kurumi peeked into the kitchen. The Artifact. “Vampyre!” Hatoko shouted. “No holding back today! Suck her dry!” The blade of the knife shined with a strange light. “Ngh!” Kurumi scowled. She could perceive it, but her body couldn’t keep up. What would have been a leisurely pace for the old Kurumi was impossibly fast for the current Kurumi. While she struggled to react, the life-sucking fang stabbed down toward her side. “Kurumi!” Matsurika cried. In the next instant, a powerful impact sent her rolling off to one side, and a second later, she understood what had happened. Matsurika had stepped in between her and Hatoko. “Matsurika?!” She had no time for gratitude, however. Hatoko was still going full throttle, and Matsurika was in the path of the knife now, the very spot where Kurumi had been only a moment earlier. It was already too late for her to escape. Bright red blood… “Hiyah!” …was not dripping from Matsurika’s side. “What?!” Kurumi opened her eyes wide as saucers, unable to process what was happening. That was an understandable reaction. Matsurika had twisted her body around to generate explosive power and deliver a palm strike to Hatoko’s arm with masterful ease. After the knife dropped to the floor, she hit Hatoko with a series of strikes and punches like she was landing a combo in a fighting game. “Ha! Yah! Ha! Hiyah!” “Hmph?!” Pummeled into submission, Hatoko plunged to the floor with a dull cry of anguish and stopped moving. Matsurika dropped into a ready pose, still on alert. Kurumi could have sworn she saw “KO!” text appear in midair. “Are you all right, Kurumi?!” Matsurika whirled around, her voice full of worry. “…Y-yes, thanks to you,” Kurumi responded, sweat rolling down her cheek. “Goodness… You’re no pushover, Matsurika. Was that some martial art?” “All part of a maiden’s education!” Matsurika flashed a brilliant smile. “Karate, capoeira, and a little of the Sukarabe Nightmare School assassination technique!” “I-is that right…?” Kurumi replied with an uncertain smile. Thus, they found themselves at the end of another case. Just as Hatoko had said, she could not be charged with any crime for the use of the Artifact since modern science had no way of proving that her cooking absorbed the vitality of others. That said, however, Kurumi and Matsurika’s objective was not to socially sanction the perpetrator but to recover the Artifacts. And now that Hatoko had lost Vampyre, she wouldn’t be able to make her rejuvenation menu anymore. “Still…” Kurumi sighed as she flipped through the Artifact register at the Tokisaki Detective Agency a few days later. “It does seem that, once again, this was not the person who stole the Artifacts from your family home, Matsurika.” “Yes.” Matsurika nodded, slowly. “It does appear that way, doesn’t it?” After everything at the restaurant, they had looked into how exactly Hatoko got a hold of the Artifact, only to find the route was the same as the perpetrator in their previous case: a mysterious item in a package addressed to a relative who was already dead. Was the person who raided the Sukarabe home distributing the Artifacts? And if they were, what on earth for? Kurumi groaned, stroking her chin. They simply had too little to go on at the moment. She sighed once more and turned her gaze on Matsurika as if to change the subject. “So what happened to the restaurant in the end?” Matsurika nodded theatrically. “It would appear they are closed for the time being. There don’t appear to be any complaints about this from anyone on the staff or the clientele, however.” “Is that right?” Kurumi opened her eyes wide. The closing of the restaurant that provided the meal of miraculous youth had to have been a serious blow for the customers, who had no idea that their life force was being sucked away. And for the staff, it was much simpler—they had lost their jobs. She would have understood completely if they turned their anger on her for causing the situation they now found themselves in. “Yes,” Matsurika said. “They may not have known about the Artifact, but even so, they seem to have had the idea from the start that perhaps they were doing something illegal.” “Oh. That makes sense.” Kurumi nodded, convinced. For a restaurant offering a course meal for five million yen, it had been incredibly busy. It wouldn’t have been a stretch for those customers to wonder if there wasn’t some shady business going on. “Perhaps the customers there that day believe you were some kind of investigator, Kurumi,” Matsurika said. “Please stop with that,” she replied dismissively. “That’s simply not who I am.” “Aren’t you? I think you could very well be,” Matsurika continued dreamily. “Making that complaint about the meal, abruptly wrestling Hatoko to the ground… I know it was to solve the case, but I felt you acted in a manner that was quite unlike you. I wondered if there wasn’t a more stylish way to handle it for someone as smart as you. But then I finally understood.” “…? Understood what?” Kurumi asked. Matsurika grinned. “You wanted to settle things quickly to stop the customers from eating anymore, didn’t you?” “…” Kurumi was silent. Heedless of Kurumi’s reaction, Matsurika continued. “You mustn’t refer to yourself as a villain. You are a magnificent ally of justice.” “…You give me too much credit.” Kurumi turned her face away quickly, and Matsurika laughed merrily. “Oh!” she said. “But there is still one thing I don’t understand.” “…What is that?” “Vampyre. How did you know after a single bite that the Artifact used in the meal wasn’t Nectar?” “Oh.” Kurumi nodded, slowly. “I’ll tell you, but you probably still won’t understand. It was very much an issue of the senses. I felt it clearly.” “…I don’t understand. What exactly did you notice?” Matsurika craned her head, a puzzled look on her face. “The distinct scent of someone feeding on the lives of others,” Kurumi replied with a self-deprecating air.
Chapter 8
14 min read