One of the greatest results of Baba’s months-long research of the PSI drives was that she had turned the merely decorative black boxes that we had installed onto the wind power turbines (as one of our sources of income) into real PSI drive black boxes. These box-type PSI drives that ran on telekinetic fuel only needed to be secured to a turbine, after which—lo and behold!—it would diligently continue turning 24/7 without me having to do anything. The fact that the turbine had fallen to the dark side caused the company employees to shudder with terror, after which they attempted to calm the supposedly raging God of Turbines by offering stacks of blank paid leave application forms to the shrine.
Thanks to Black Box-kun’s heavy labor, more of my processing capability had become freed up to investigate the detectives. Though I did feel a little bad for the employees, I had no intention of changing my plans. If you want a more humane working environment, then don’t just pray to god, make it happen with your own hands. Be not a beggar, but a fighter. Only then shall your dreams be realized.
So then, first order of business was the standard “house visit.”
The scraggly-haired Assistant Inspector Yasuo Yasui was 31 years old, living in an apartment in a relatively posh part of the metropolitan area (monthly rent of 120,000 yen, or $1,100 US) by himself. His garage had a super eye-catching foreign car with all the bells and whistles that was clearly worth several million yen, and he wore tailor-made suits and high-class wristwatches. On his mantle was a whole row of high-spec cameras on display.
Is being a police officer been such a profitable profession that he was able to gather so much stuff by 31 years old? Upon some research, I learned that the annual salary of an assistant inspector was roughly 8 million yen ( $73.5k US). Subtract taxes, rent, utilities like gas and electricity, phone bills, gas money, and the cost of the really nice meals that he was eating out every day, and there should have been almost nothing left in his pocket. It was entirely beyond his means to save up to buy all the expensive stuff that he owned.
I considered the possibility of him having received a large inheritance from his parents or him having struck a jackpot from gambling. However, his parents were still alive and well, already retired and taking care of a tiny farm as a hobby. Although Detective Yasui did have a habit of visiting indecent shops where he could have pretty ladies fawn all over him, he did not gamble at all.
Then how was it that he had so much money?
As I continued monitoring him in perplexion, I finally witnessed Detective Yasui visiting a suspicious bar in the deep of night, where he sold internal information from the police to a crime syndicate in return for cash. For a brief moment, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, in the off chance that he was carrying out a highly confidential investigation of the syndicate by pretending to be building a connection with them. However, upon seeing him counting each bill one by one while licking his lips and chuckling with “gehehe” like some manga character, there was no longer any doubt in my mind that he was just a plain old dirtbag.
There I was, thinking to incite Detective Yasui into betraying the force, and turns out he was already doing it.
It was just terrible. In more ways than one.
Clearly I was not the only person who had thought “ah, this guy looks like he’d turn for money.” The crime syndicate had set their eyes on him ahead of me.
And there we had our corrupt police officer. There was no mistaking the fact that he was a villain who was betraying the trust of his colleagues and filling his own pockets through completely illegal means. But that said, he was someone who seemed so in character that I couldn’t bring myself to hate him too much. According to what I overheard through eavesdropping, he did not hand over information that would affect someone’s life or death, and he was crafty enough to dodge all of the crime syndicate’s attempts to fully pull him over to their side. In fact, he was also successfully gleaning some information back from the crime syndicate too.
He was a villain, but not a heinous one. He was not incapable, but not all that capable either. In short, he was a small-time villain.
With all that said, I was slightly leery of allying with a person who would proactively look for opportunities to profit from betrayal, so I put Detective Yasui aside for a moment as I turned toward Detective Kumano next.
Detective Kumano with the large, solid build was 52 years old. He had been previously married, but his wife had died from an accident early on before giving him any children. After that, he had remained a bachelor the entire time, living by himself in a tiny, cheap apartment.
Any money that he had leftover, he donated to several struggling martial art dojos in his neighborhood to keep them afloat. Everyone worshiped him as if he was a bodhisattva.
As could be expected from his build, Detective Kumano had crazy muscles. And his backstory was equally crazy.
He hailed from a family who ran a dojo that practiced an ancient style of martial arts, and he had been steeped in training ever since young. He repeatedly left very favorable results in numerous sparring exchanges with other martial arts dojos, after which he won a kendo tournament during middle school. As if that wasn’t enough, he went on to earn a 3-dan in judo, 3-dan in karate, and set a record for winning an archery tournament three years in a row. The national taiho-jutsu (arresting art) tournament was constantly his for the taking, and every year he joined the Tokyo marathon, constantly maintaining a position around the 500th place.
In spite of this incredible personal history—or should I say, because of this incredible personal history?—he was humble and not haughty, and he kept the majority of his mountain of trophies and honorable certificates packed away inside a closet, with only a few displayed inconspicuously around his bedroom. In addition, every day he never failed to make time for practice and training, which explained his extremely brawny body despite having passed 50.
Within the Organized Crime Control Bureau, he was a legend, and everyone looked up to him and affectionately called him “Kuma-san.” There was also a rather believable rumor that he had once pinned down a real bear with his bare hands.
With all of the above, I had myself the perfect picture of a veteran martial artist. However, on the bookshelf in his living room, I also discovered a collection of old adventure-themed novels and video tapes quietly lying in neat little rows. The lineup that was fading in color and quite worn down with re-reads were all works that depicted martial artists defeating monsters and magic users with muscles and techniques, mowing down everything before them with brute force. There were even a ton of doujinshi so old and so niche that I got no hits when I searched them up on the internet, which clearly indicated that this was something that he had been crazy about since long ago.
I smell it. I smell it so strongly. This is the smell of a romanticist who has been chasing his childhood dreams throughout his entire life......!
Is this it?
Let alone external cooperator, how about joining Amaterasu as a full member?
We can prepare both monsters and magic users for you!
You can beat them up as much as you like!
It’ll be fun! It’ll definitely be a ton of fun!
Amaterasu welcomes even older dudes if they have a dream!
I’ve already been thinking since a while ago that we want a dignified, older gentleman!