“Oh man, oh man. This was a mistake,” I said into the phone as I entered Kichijoji Park in the middle of the night. Kichijoji was even quieter at night than it was during the day. A bunch of the stores that were normally open late had closed early. “I still can’t believe I was on the list of the 256. Their information network is really something.”
“You screwed up, Agent Moritsuka.”
“Yeah, I sure did. Sorry.”
“Apologies are unnecessary.”
“I’m sure.” I carefully walked up the steps of a small slide, the phone still in one hand. Maybe one good thing about being a ghost was that I could play on children’s playground equipment without having to worry about anybody seeing me.
“You’re sure it doesn’t feel like you’re dead?”
“Not in the least. That’s why I was so surprised when I got the call.”
When I got to the top of the slide, I took out a can of coffee I’d put in my coat pocket. It was hot; I’d just bought it a second ago from a vending machine. It was too hot to hold, in fact, so I’d put it in my pocket to cool it down.
I put my phone between my jaw and my shoulder and opened the pull tab with both hands. I took a sip, and surprisingly, it was warm. “Really, how the hell does this phone work anyway? Should I add that to the list of things to investigate?”
“There’s no time now.”
“That’s a shame. It might be the invention of the century. You could call it ‘the Ghost Phone’ and sell it for a billion dollars.”
Actually, though, I had an idea about how this phone worked. That’s why I was able to guess that the call would cut off soon, and as if to prove me right, I could tell that the voice was starting to get faint. The voice was beginning to get covered with static.
“Well, if I’m dead, I’m dead. I would’ve hoped for a cooler way to die, but that’s just me. Like I tracked down the criminal and he got me at the last minute, or something like that.”
“What will you do now?”
My joke was completely ignored.
“Inspector Zenigata, whom I respect greatly, would’ve made it look like he was dead and then come back to life three minutes before the end of the anime. But I think it’ll be difficult for me to do that. Since I’m dead, I was able to take a long vacation, so I’m going back to working on the investigation. It may all be for nothing, though.”
“...I see.”
“We can assume that this call is being monitored, so this will be the last time I talk to you. ‘El Psy Kongroo,’ and all that.”
“What?”
“It was a phrase from an anime a few years ago. Oh, maybe it was a game?”
“...Good luck.” The voice on the other end of the line seemed to be shaking a little. I couldn’t tell if it was some emotion they were feeling or just due to the static. Knowing their personality, they weren’t the type to feel sad about my death. Maybe they were scared to be talking to a dead man.
“By the way, who’s taking over for me?”
“Her. You know her well, right? She’s already started work—”
“Did you not understand why I had her removed a year ago?”
They didn’t answer. The connection was dead.
I shrugged and gulped down the rest of the coffee. I tossed the empty can at a trash can a good distance away. It flew in a beautiful arc, like in an anime—and then disappeared into the darkness before it landed. It didn’t do anything romantic, like turn into particles of light... It just vanished without a sound.
“I think, therefore I am, huh? This reminds me of Descartes.”
Where do people go when they die?
That question had been unanswered since the dawn of the very idea of philosophy. Did I know the answer now? As I wondered, I felt someone looking at me and turned my eyes towards the front of the park.
There was a man standing beneath the streetlight, alone. He was a tall man, dressed all in black, the kind of person who would surely be questioned by the police if he was out late at night.
“Did you wait for me to get off the phone?” I asked, but the man didn’t answer. “I didn’t think you’d actually come. Do you like me, perhaps?”
The man ignored my joke, too.
“Maybe I should introduce myself, devil? No, perhaps...”
I went down the slide and walked over to the man. There was quite a difference in our heights. I had to look up at him. God was very unfair. “Or perhaps it would be better to use your real name: Kiryu Kusakabe.”
The eyes of the man—Kiryu Kusakabe—narrowed as if he were feeling cautious.
I’d looked him up once I’d started researching the Black Magic Agency, and I’d found he had quite the resume.
“I’ve done a lot of looking into you. There are a lot of people in the police like me, with too much time on their hands.”
“Hmph. All that work, and you ended up dead. That’s pretty funny.”
Ooh, sharp tongue! But it would take more than that to provoke me.
“You’re pretty happy I’m dead though, aren’t you? Now I can’t do anything to Aria... Or rather, Ria Minase. Oh, but she’s also—”
“How much do you know?” Kusakabe glared at me. The light in his eyes was incredibly fierce. Even in the darkness, I could tell he wanted to kill me. Scary!
“I actually don’t know all that much. I don’t even know where the professor’s hair went. Do you?”
He continued to glare. Well, even if he did know, he wouldn’t tell me. Time for my next move, then.
“I’ll tell you one thing I do know—three years ago...”
Before I could say anything else, I heard the sound of him gritting his teeth hard.
“...after an explosion at a fuel battery factory, you gained the ability to leave your own body.” I watched for his response.
Kusakabe silently put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. Was he unconcerned, or trying to hide his fear?
“Three years ago, you were hit with a huge amount of scandium. That’s what gave you the power to leave your body.” I went over to a nearby bench and sat down. “That factory was dealing with new kinds of alpha-type scandium isotopes. Think you could tell me more about them? How about it?”
But when I looked back at him, he was gone. He’d vanished without a sound.
Oh dear, I guess he’d left. What a shame.
“Don’t get too deep into this... Devil.”