Whoa. She’s seriously shuddering like crazy.
Craaaaaaack!! Craaaaaack!!
I’m not sure if it was just bad luck or if the captain wasn’t a very good pilot, but this plane was flying right next to a thundercloud.
“…K-Kinji~~~…”
From underneath the blankets, Aria called out to me in a tearful voice and grabbed a hold of my sleeve while I was sitting next to her.
“C-Come on. You don’t have to be that scared. Here, I’ll turn on the television.”
I shrank back a little from Aria, who was tenaciously hanging onto my sleeve like a child, and flipped through the channels after turning on the television with the remote. Recent movies and anime flashed by. I left the channel on a historical drama that was probably included for the more elderly passengers.
“Don’t claim to have forgotten about me, the great Sakurafubiki! I won’t stand for it!”
Oh…this is a sword-play samurai movie that’s based on one of my ancestors—Kin of Tohyama, a famous magistrate.
According to my brother’s theory, Kin of Tohyama also had the genetic make-up allowing him to go into hysteria mode, and apparently, he was something of an exhibitionist because by stripping himself to the waist, his intellectual and physical abilities would rapidly increase.
“Look. Watch this and take your mind off of it.”
“R-Right.”
It would seem Aria’s rule stating that I couldn’t talk to her had been rescinded. Her trembling hand, which was clinging to my sleeve, was so small and frail… At this moment, I really did think of it as the hand of any normal girl. If—and this is a big “if”—Aria were just a normal girl right now, I, being just a regular, everyday high school guy…
“Aria.”
…would bring my hand over her trembling hand…just like this…
“K-Kinji…?”
Sure. As a regular classmate, as a friend, I could at least ease her trembling.
After a few seconds of hesitation, just when Aria’s fingers were about to close on my hand…
Blam! Blam!
…a sound resonated throughout the plane. This time, it wasn’t the sound of thunder, but a sound that we the students of Butei High are more used to hearing—gunshots. Stepping out into the narrow corridor, I found the place to be in utter chaos. Passengers coming out of the twelve rooms and a few flight attendants—a medley of the young, the old, males, and females—were creating a ruckus with anxious looks on their faces. Looking towards the front of the plane where the gunshots came from, I saw that the door to the cockpit was wide open.
“!”
Beside it stood the small-figured idiot of a flight attendant I dealt with earlier. She was dragging the captain and copilot out of the cockpit. I wasn’t sure what happened to them, but they weren’t moving at all. Seeing the attendant cast them aside on the floor of the corridor, I hurriedly drew my gun.
“Freeze!”
Upon hearing me, the flight attendant raised her head and smiled with a face lacking any characteristic features. She then winked at me and went back into the cockpit saying, “Freaking attention please.”
I heard a brief, sharp noise like a pin being drawn, and the flight attendant threw a can at me that she pulled out from inside her blouse. It rolled up next to my feet and a chill ran down my spine.
“Kinji!”
Subduing her fear of thunder, Aria cried out as she came out of the room.
Psssssshhhh!
I could tell from the noise. It was a gas canister. Sarin. Soman. Tabun. Phosgene. Zyklon B. The names of all the poison gases I learned about in Assault raced through my mind. If it were a particularly strong type of gas, this battle was already lost.
“Everyone, get back into your rooms! Shut the doors!” I yelled as I pushed Aria back into the room.
Just before I closed the door, the plane shook violently. All of the lights went out, and the fearful screams of the passengers could be heard one after another. Before long, the darkness was illuminated by red emergency lamps.
“…Kinji! Are you okay?!”
I looked up at Aria who was showing concern for my well-being and tried taking a deep breath. I was able to breathe. I could see. My limbs weren’t paralyzed. I’d been had. Apparently, the gas ejected was harmless.
“Aria. That ridiculous way of speaking…that flight attendant was the “Butei killer”. The perp showed up after all.”
“…after all…? You knew the “Butei killer” was going to show up…?” Aria looked at me with her camellia-colored eyes wide open.
I decided to tell her about the deduction I made while I was in hysteria mode.
“The ‘Butei killer’ started off with a motorcycle-jacking and a carjacking. This is something I just learned about recently, but…a certain Butei was also killed in a boat-jacking incident. In that particular case, the Butei probably confronted the ‘Butei killer’ face to face.”
“…Why do you think so?”
“Because the boat-jacking was the only incident you didn't know about. You didn't intercept the radio frequency, right?”
“Y-Yeah.”
“The ‘Butei killer’ wasn’t sending out any. In other words, there was no need to control the ship remotely. The culprit was there on the boat in person.”
I had always found it odd that my older brother, of all people, “didn’t make it out in time”.
“But the targeted vehicles—a motorcycle, a car, a boat—which became larger each time, suddenly got smaller. My bicycle. After that was the bus.”
“…!”
“Do you get it, Aria? From the very beginning, it was a message. She had you in the palm of her hand from the start. She pinned the guilt on your mother and declared war on you. And now she’s planning on having a confrontation with you during this third incident just like she did with my brot…I mean, the Butei who was killed in the boat-jacking. Only this time a plane’s been hijacked.”
Aria, who wasn’t very good at deduction, gritted her teeth in frustration. All of a sudden…
Beep, beep. Beep. Beep, beep, beep.
The fasten-safety belt lights made emergency high-pitched noises as they began flickering erratically.
“…Japanese Morse code…” whispered Aria.
That being the case, I tried my hand at deciphering the flashing lights as I was rocked back and forth in the plane.
Come on over. IU is heaven. Come on over. I’m at the bar on the first floor.
“She’s inviting you to come down.”
“That’s just fine. I’ll open a hole in her,” said Aria narrowing her eyes in anger and pulling the pistols out from underneath her skirt one right after the other.
“I’ll come with you. I’m not sure if I’ll be of much help in my current state though.”
“I don’t need you to come with me.”
Craaaaack!
Aria’s entire body went stiff as the thundercloud outside made its presence known again.
“Should I come or not?”
“I-If you want to come so badly, I won’t stop you.”
Following the small guide lights that were installed on the flooring at regular intervals, the two of us cautiously made our way down to the first floor. The first floor was a lavishly decorated bar, and underneath its chandelier, a woman was sitting cross-legged at the counter. It was the flight attendant from earlier.
“!?”
With our pistols pointed at her, both of us knitted our brows. She was wearing a Butei High school uniform. Not only that, but it was a remodeled school uniform trimmed with innumerable frills. Her skirt, bulging outwards like a flower with the help of a pannier, was the same one Riko was wearing at Odaiba.
“You freaking played marvelously into my hands this time as well.”
As she said this, the flight attendant tore off the mask-like prosthetic makeup she was wearing over her face. From behind it appeared…
“…Riko?!”
“Bon soir.”
There was no mistake. The person in front of us who guzzled down a blue cocktail and winked at me was none other than Riko. I was utterly astounded at this bizarre turn of events. Did this mean that after parting with me in Odaiba, she got on that customized Vespa and tracked down this plane just like I did? Did she then dress up like a flight attendant and used her Butei badge to get onboard?
“A person’s talents for doing battle with others by utilizing both brain and brawn tend to be inherited, don’t they? There are quite a few gifted people at Butei High who inherited their talents like the two of you did. But…your family is special, Olmes.”
“…!”
Upon hearing Riko say that word, Aria stiffened up as if an electrical current had passed through her body.
Olmes…? Was that the family name of Aria’s British relatives, the “H’s”?
“Who…are you exactly?”
Riko smiled at Aria who was furrowing her brow, and the lightning that flashed by the window illuminated her smiling face.