“Y-You’re...!”
Two purple eyes, the same ones that had looked up at her as she stared through the scope, now gazed at her from only inches away.
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A crowd had already assembled at the crime scene by the time Yukinari arrived. It was located just a short distance outside of one of Friedland’s gates, just beyond one of the newly dug irrigation ditches. This was one of the first such ditches that had been dug, and it was rare now for Friedlanders to come near it. The only visitors were periodic patrols checking on the ditch’s condition.
Fiona and the community watch were shouting at the assembled townspeople, “Keep back! Keep back! Keep your distance!” But their injunctions didn’t appear to be very effective. Everyone was so afraid; this couldn’t help but draw interest. The victim lying on the ground could have been any of them.
“Excuse me, out of the way please,” Yukinari said, working his way toward where Fiona and the others stood.
“It’s Lord Yukinari.”
“Lord Yukinari—”
As the people realized who had arrived, they parted to make way for him. As he got closer, Yukinari saw Fiona and the watch were standing by the body, a man in work clothes. Judging by his outfit, he was probably one of the fieldworkers. Most likely, he had been out here checking on the irrigation canal.
As usual, the cause of death was a single stab to the heart.
For several seconds, Yukinari stared silently at the corpse. But then he started walking, thinking that it was not so much the body as the surroundings he should be looking at.
“Hey, Yukinari! What are you—” Arlen shouted angrily, perhaps feeling that Yukinari didn’t seem to be taking this seriously, but Yukinari had no interest in going over the details with him. He interrupted Arlen with a wave of his hand.
“Trust me. You do your investigation, I’ll do mine.”
“Yuki...” Dasa, walking beside him, spoke up. “Are... you looking for... that?”
She seemed to have a good idea of what he expected to find. It was only natural that she should. She had seen the words “Amano Yukinari” carved into the earlier crime scene. She knew that a similar inscription had been left at nearly every killing.
“Yeah. I didn’t notice it the first time... Or rather, somebody probably just thought they were meaningless scratches, thought nothing of them...”
Chances were that his name had been written at every crime scene. But the people of this world couldn’t read kanji, and it was likely that the community watch, unaware of what they were doing, had simply wiped the inscriptions away. In some cases, they might have moved the bodies, separating them from where the words were written. Now that Yukinari was spending all his time in town, he arrived at the crime scenes much sooner, meaning there was no time for anything to be tampered with.
There they were. The two words: “Amano Yukinari.”
This has to be aimed at me, right...?
But why? If the words were being left by a Church angel who had come to kill him, why not attack him directly? There had been plenty of chances.
And if it is Hatsune...
What was the point of writing his name at each crime scene, as if it were the last testament of every victim? Maybe there was no point. They had yet to see anyone react strangely to the sign in the plaza. Did that mean the killer wasn’t his sister? Or did it mean...
No, wait. These characters...
Was this about being sure? In the same way Yukinari had put up the sign in the square, maybe the killer wanted to know whether Yukinari was really the reincarnation of Amano Yukinari. If that was the case, maybe the killer was watching even now to see what reaction Yukinari would have to the inscription.
Just like Yukinari had been watching the sign.
It came suddenly.
Yukinari jumped as he heard a crack like a thunderclap.
It was a gunshot. From the direction of Friedland’s gates, no less.
“What was that?!” Fiona and the community watch looked around, thinking there must have been a wild horse or the like nearby. But a few people must have realized that it was a gunshot. That somebody had fired a gun.
Arlen and the other former missionary knights, as well as the members of the community watch, had all been provided with guns. Some of them may even have used them when they ran into demigods or xenobeasts on their patrols. Certainly they would have heard them fired in practice. But the first person Yukinari thought of was the girl he had left on the belltower back in town—Berta.
“I’m sorry—you’ll have to take care of things here!” he said, and then he set off running as fast as he could. Dasa followed him, presumably having come to the same conclusion.
“Yuki...”
“Dasa,” he said, reaching out to her, pulling her up as he ran. As if she had known he would do this, Dasa jumped, ending up in his arms. It was a near-telepathic move that could only have come from long, long acquaintance.
Yukinari held Dasa in his arms and kept running. It was quicker to carry her than to have her run alongside.
“Yuki...” The note of anxiety in her voice might have been because she had a guess at who the serial killer was.
“It’s okay.”
If the gunshot was from Berta’s Derrringer, if she had fired because she saw someone she thought was the killer, that meant that when they arrived Yukinari might well be face-to-face with the criminal.
In other words, with...
“It’s okay,” Yukinari repeated, less to Dasa than to himself.