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In the end, Yukinari and the others decided not to go back to the sanctuary to retrieve their things. They wanted to be ready to help keep Friedland safe at every possible moment. Fiona would find something appropriate in terms of changes of clothes and other necessities. Yukinari also made plenty of extra bullets for the Durandalls he’d given to the community watch. Durandall and Red Chili used the same ammunition, .44 Magnum rounds, so this was easy enough, and if they started to run low it was just a matter of Yukinari making more. He could also produce accessories for Red Chili and more bullets for Derrringer if the need arose.
Ulrike was also quite capable of taking care of herself. Yukinari gave her a stern warning to do her morning photosynthesis somewhere people wouldn’t see her. He wondered how exactly she had been handling it in Rostruch.
No matter. They quickly concluded their discussions in the Schillings mansion, and Yukinari went back out into town. He couldn’t bear to sit still; he wanted to check every corner of the village with his own eyes.
Dasa had insisted she would accompany him, but Yukinari had told her that he needed to do some serious thinking and left her at the mansion.
“It’s Lord Yukinari!”
“Lord Yukinari!”
As he walked around town, the Friedlanders gave him smiles of relief. Yukinari had been trying to keep mum about the murders, but people will talk. So many deaths had led to dark rumors, such as that of a disembodied killer ghost stalking the streets.
Yukinari waved and tried to force a smile onto his face. It wouldn’t get him any closer to catching the killer, but anything he could do to ease people’s fears, he would. Even as he smiled at them, though, he was ruminating anxiously.
How could someone from this world have written in kanji? Written my name?
He couldn’t get the image of the crime scene out of his head. He considered the possibility that he had simply misunderstood what he was seeing. If it had been some simple character like the kanji for “one,” which was just one stroke, or “ten,” which was just two, then it might have been possible that some errant scratch simply happened to look like the character in question. But the kanji in Yukinari’s name were very complex, and it was unlikely that they were there by chance.
There was no such thing as kanji in this world, or if there was, Yukinari had never seen it. An old saying went that monkeys at typewriters, given an infinite amount of time, could produce the works of Shakespeare—which was about as likely as someone in this world accidentally producing the four characters of Yukinari’s name all in a row in this place at this time. Practically speaking, the odds were zero.
In other words, this was not an accident. It was a deliberate act by someone—most likely, someone who came from the same “previous world” as Yukinari did. Someone who knew him.
Yukinari might have been overjoyed at this—if the words hadn’t been carved into a murder scene. Yukinari was now surrounded by friends and comrades: Dasa, Berta, Fiona, Veronika, Ulrike, the children from the orphanage, and all the people of Friedland. It hardly left him with time to feel lonely. And yet, the fact that he had come from another world entirely was always in the corner of his mind.
It was his experiences in that other world that had forged his personality. He could never forget them. It had not been the best possible life, yet he looked back on it fondly. If there was someone else in this world who felt the same way as he did, that should have been a comfort to him.
But what if that person was a murderer? What if they were...
“Dammit.” Yukinari finished his circuit of the town, having come up with nothing of any real importance, and turned back toward the Schillings mansion. “I can’t believe this...”
He knew. Deep inside, he knew. But it was a conclusion he desperately didn’t want to draw, so he carefully kept his distance from it. He had left Dasa behind because he had been afraid that the perceptive young woman might come up with the answer herself.
“Hatsune...”
She had died in the same fire that led to Yukinari ending up here. What if a ritual much like the one Jirina had performed had caught Hatsune’s soul, or whatever it was, and brought it here, just like Yukinari’s? What if it had been given flesh?
When he had first awoken in this new world, Yukinari had asked Jirina and Dasa whether his older sister was with him. They had died together; it wasn’t so surprising to think they might have been reincarnated together as well. She would know Japanese, and could certainly write Yukinari’s name.
“I’m back,” he said to the butler as he entered the mansion. The man responded by informing Yukinari that the guest room on the far end of the second floor had been set aside for him. “Thanks,” Yukinari said and went up the stairs, heading for the room at the far end of the hall.
When he got inside, he tossed himself on the bed without even lighting a lamp. He lay there in silence.
Set aside the question of whether or not his older sister was here. Why had those characters been carved at the crime scene? He was the only one who could read them; they practically begged him to come looking for someone else who had been reincarnated from Japan. But if that was the intent, why not put them somewhere more conspicuous?
Either way, there was no reason the person had to write “Amano Yukinari.” The words had been left there by someone who knew he was in this town. Why? Was it a challenge? Or—
Suddenly, a knock came at the door. “Lord Yukinari? Are you awake?”
The reluctant tone suggested it was Berta. “I’m awake,” he said, almost sighing. “The door’s open.”
“Okay. I’m... I’m coming in.”
Berta wasn’t the only one who came through the open door. Dasa and Ulrike were with her.
“What’s wrong? Did anything happen?” For a moment, he was anxious: surely they hadn’t discovered yet another new victim?