Chapter 24: Chapter 1.2
This is when even atheists start praying
"Not fair."
All by myself in a dark cubicle, I was holding my head...well, my stomach, to be precise. Wave after wave of pain swept over me. The fierce struggle had been going on for more than ten minutes already, and I wiped sweat off my forehead.
"Dammit, this is all your fault, too, Siesta," I complained. She was probably chowing down on takoyaki again somewhere, right about now.
Basically, I was currently in a bathroom stall, battling stomach cramps.
The cause was clearly overeating, and that was entirely due to Siesta making me keep her company while she bought and consumed a ridiculous amount of food. Not only that, but when I'd asked her to let me rest a little, she'd ignored my request and dragged me around the haunted house in the old school building, and that was when the cramps had hit.
However, that wasn't the only reason I was feeling lousy. It was because this bathroom was actually located inside the haunted house—and the stall I was in was the one in the rumors: the third stall from the door in the girls'
bathroom on the third floor of the old school building.
...No, wait, don't jump to conclusions. That's not it. This was the only stall that had been made available to the staff, guys and girls alike. They'd just let me use it because this was an emergency. I absolutely did not sneak into the girls' bathroom, all right?
Naturally, the inside of the bathroom was gloomy, and I'd been hearing eerie sounds in the background the whole time. Frankly, I wanted to get out of there ASAP...but my stomach was sounding a squeaky, gurgling alarm, as if warning me to stay on the john. To put it mildly:
"I want to die." And so here I was.
To make matters worse, the ominous atmosphere kept the rumor going through my mind despite my desire to keep it at bay.
"I mean, come on, I'm in middle school. There's no way ghosts and monsters still freak me out."
"Who are you making excuses to?" "...!"
A voice that wasn't mine came from somewhere above me, and I froze... but it was a girl's voice, one I'd heard somewhere before.
"What, peeping at me in the bath wasn't enough for you? Don't peep while I'm on the toilet, Siesta."
When I looked up, there she was. She'd climbed up on the stall door and was peering down at me. I thought she'd headed for the exit on her own, but no, she'd come back. Sighing, I pulled up my pants. The darkness had worked in my favor; I was pretty sure she hadn't quite managed to see anything.
"You were taking so long, I got worried... And down we go." "What? No. Why did you get down?"
"Was I supposed to stay up there forever?"
"No, get down on the outside." Why had she gone out of her way to climb down in here with me?
"There's something I want to check... Mm, found it." Siesta bent down and retrieved something from the shadows around the toilet. It was a scrap of plastic, maybe from a bag.
"What do you think this is?"
"Let's see... Maybe it's from a bag of cold medicine? Like, maybe
somebody took it after they ate their lunch in here."
"The fact that that's the very first thing you thought of makes me feel pure sympathy for you. Don't tell me this 'peaceful routine' you want to protect involves you eating your lunch all by yourself in the bathroom."
"As I told you, my parents are missing. Present progressive tense. So nobody's ever made me lunch. The only lunch I eat in the bathroom is sweet rolls."
"Okay, I really feel bad for you now. Shall I make you lunch every once in a while?"
After dropping that on me as if it were nothing:
"Hup."
Reaching under her skirt, Siesta hooked her fingers onto something and started to pull down.
"Siesta, wait! Can't you see me here?! You know I can see you, right?!" "Huh? That's a very dubious habit you've got, making a girl hold it when
she needs to go."
"I didn't say that... I said absolutely nothing even remotely like that." "Anyway, I'm going to tinkle, so leave, Kimi."
"Huh? You're planning to toss me out into this creepy place by myself?" "Weren't you just telling yourself, 'I mean, come on, I'm in middle school.
There's no way ghosts and monsters still freak me out'? With your pants around your ankles?"
"If you saw, then you should've reacted back then!"
This couldn't be right. We were in a teen rom-com at the cultural festival; how had we ended up acting out a comedy routine in the bathroom of a haunted house? Although, if you took the words "haunted house" and "comedy routine" in isolation, you could say we were still making the most of the cultural festival...
I sighed, and that was when it happened. "Quiet." Siesta put a hand over my mouth.
I strained my ears, wondering what was going on, and then—tap-tap-tap. Somebody knocked on the door of our stall.
No way, I thought. We were currently in the third stall from the door of the girls' bathroom on the third floor of the old school building. It wasn't three in the morning, but there were more than enough conditions in place to remind me of that rumor.
It happened again: tap-tap-tap.
Whoever it was knocked a second time. Siesta and I nodded to each other.
Slowly, we unlocked the door and pushed it open, and in the next instant— "...! ...Hmm?"
Outside the stall was a girl in a red jumper skirt—er, scratch that.
Somebody in a pink rabbit suit.
"Weren't you handing out flyers in the school?"
No, wait, had that been a panda? I had seen multiple students in full-body character suits, handing out flyers or carrying directory signs around.
Anyway, what was this rabbit doing here?
Oh, were they a haunted house staff member? Maybe they'd come because we'd been in here so long that they'd gotten worried. If so, I'd have to think up a good excuse. What kind of white lie would convince someone who'd just caught a girl and guy together in a bathroom stall—?
"I won't let you get away."
However, I promptly realized that I wouldn't have time to think up any excuse, and that there wouldn't have been any point anyway.
The next thing I knew, the person in the bunny suit had turned tail and hared off—and Siesta was pointing a gun at their back.
"Hey, Siesta...?"
With no clue what was going on, I just stood there, but Siesta launched into a run. As she took off, she called back to me:
"That bunny is Miss Hanako of the Toilet."
A pure-white dress and the flying bride
"Hurry," Siesta called.
Even though I still had no idea what was happening, I chased after the bunny suit, too. It didn't have much of a lead on us yet. I'd assumed we'd catch it right away, but...
"Who'd have thought they'd be this fast..."
Come to think of it, I remembered that rabbit had been wearing high- performance athletic shoes. They couldn't have factored this chase into their
plans beforehand, could they? "Whoa!"
To make matters worse, my foot caught on something and I stumbled. When I shone my phone screen on it to see what it was...it turned out to be a fake severed head. Ah, right—this entire floor was a haunted house. There wasn't much light, and the complicated, maze-like layout was slowing us down more than we'd anticipated.
"Geez. This is kid stuff." Sighing, I straightened up. "So what do you mean, 'That bunny is Miss Hanako'?"
"I'll explain later. Right now, get moving as fast as you can."
"It's pretty hard to make myself chase somebody when I don't understand why I'm doing it."
"I'm telling you, we don't have that kind of time. And why are you squeezing my hand?"
Dammit. She caught me, huh? I thought I'd be okay if I did it casually.
"What, do you like me, Kimi?" "Are you an idiot?"
"Wow, that is incredibly irritating."
"I just grabbed your hand involuntarily because that severed head on the ground scared me. Obviously."
"That's nothing to brag about. You're being far more unfair than me right now."
"Ha-ha! I win."
During that stupid exchange, we got out of the haunted house. Then we crossed the long corridor that linked the old school building with the new one, which put us back among the mock shops. However...
"This is, uh..."
There, we found multiple people in bunny costumes, handing out flyers and balloons in the crowded corridor. It wasn't possible to tell which was the real one at a glance.
"No better place to hide a tree than in the forest, hmm? ...Nom-nom." "Yeah, they lost us real good. Wait, are you eating?" When I looked over at
Siesta, she was munching on a buttered baked potato. "Seriously? Now? You're the one who started this whole chase; if anybody needs to keep their guard up, it's you."
"I can't move unless I refuel. And they want three hundred yen for this."
"You were gonna explode a few minutes ago. And don't just send me the bill again."
"Okay, you can have a bite, so let's split the check." "Check-splitting. Wow. Oh, hey, isn't that the one?"
On the opposite side of the U-shaped school building, I'd spotted someone in a rabbit costume gazing at us from a distance, through the window. They darted off, as if they'd noticed me looking back.
"That was dumb. If they had just played it cool, we never would've guessed. All right, let's go catch 'em."
"I really like the way you eventually decided to just go with the flow.
Continue to develop that trait."
"I told you, that's annoying. I have not agreed to an assistant training project."
As we bantered with each other, we broke into a run again. And just then— "This is the Costuming Club! Come try on costumes for free!" a girl called,
trying to attract visitors.
If we'd had time, I would have liked to enjoy the sight of Siesta as a cat- eared maid for a little while, but sadly, we didn't.
"Two, please."
Or apparently we did.
"No, we don't! Seriously! They're going to get away again!"
Siesta was headed into the classroom, and I caught the cuff of her sleeve. "This is our strategy. If our opponent is going to blend into a sea of
character costumes, we'll disguise ourselves with cosplay."
"Is that actually going to work? I get the feeling a cat-eared maid would draw a lot of attention."
"Oh, come on, it's fine... And why are you assuming I'd be a cat-eared maid? I'm not wearing that."
Soon we were ushered into the classroom, handed bags with costumes in them, then shown into simple changing rooms that had been partitioned off. Alone behind the curtain, I took my costume out of its bag.
"...Uh..."
Frankly, I wouldn't exactly go out of my way to wear this... Any middle schooler would have found it a little embarrassing. Still, if the goal was to disguise ourselves, it had to be done. After hesitating a little, I pulled on the costume, steeled myself, and opened the curtain.
"...And nobody's even looking."
This after I'd braced myself and everything. Jerks.
So what were the Costuming Club members doing? For some reason, they were all gathered around the other changing room, squealing. The person inside was, naturally, the one who'd come in with me.
"Sorry to keep you waiting."
When the curtain finally opened, there was Siesta in a pure-white wedding dress.
"How is it?" Smiling, she tilted her head gently.
"Oh, uh. Well... It looks good on you," I managed to say, tearing my eyes away.
"...I didn't think you'd actually tell me." "Well, I mean, there's no point in lying."
"You look good, too, Kimi... That tuxedo suits you." Siesta pointed at my outfit.
"I-it does, huh?" "Yes..."
We were both refusing to look at each other now. This was terribly awkward.
"If you'd like, I'll take a photo for you!" One of the Costuming Club girls held up a camera.
"Well, I guess...?" "Since we're here..."
We glanced at each other again, then accepted the offer. "All right, are you ready? Say cheese!"
Click.
The traditional peace sign pose didn't seem appropriate to our clothes, so the photo only showed Siesta and me, standing side by side. The girl sent it to each of our smartphones.
"This will be a good memory, huh?" Siesta said bashfully, and I smiled faintly.
Yeah, it really was— "—Wait, no!!"
I yelled.
"The rabbit! We're chasing the rabbit, remember?!"
Why on earth had we let this cosplay thing fry our brains? We'd completely forgotten our main goal...
"We accidentally used up too much of our runtime on the romantic comedy, didn't we? Let's hurry."
Finally, Siesta was back to her usual self, and she sprinted out of the classroom, still wearing the wedding dress.
"Hey! ...Argh, dammit. We'll bring the costumes back later!" I called to the dazed Costuming Club members, then managed to catch up to Siesta somehow.
"Not exactly made for running," she said.
"You're definitely the only person on the planet who'd play tag dressed like that."
A girl and guy in a wedding dress and tuxedo dashed down the long corridor. Every student there whipped out their smartphone. Did they think we were doing a cosplay event or something? If those photos ended up on social media, this was going to haunt me forever.
"Hey..." Siesta was wearing a smile sunny enough to blow those gloomy clouds away. "This is fun, isn't it, Assistant?"
That smile she was giving me, right then, was exactly what people mean when they talk about the joy of youth.
"Who are you calling your assistant?" "Oh, you caught that, huh?"
Don't give me that. And don't flip right back to normal. Geez.
"Assistant, over there." Siesta pointed toward the window. Beyond it, I saw...
"It ran all that way?"
The bunny suit was cutting straight across the schoolyard, through the teeming crowd.
"They actually stayed in the bunny costume for us. What a conscientious fugitive."
"You can't get out of those by yourself."
"Well, now I feel bad for it." Running full tilt in that costume at this time of year? It had to be sweating buckets.
"That's why we have to be humane and catch it fast," Siesta said as she
flung open the window.
"...Whoa, wait, I've got a really bad feeling about this. I'm pretty sure I'm wrong, but you're not planning to jump from here, are you?"
"No, I'm not."
Okay. Phew.
"It's not just me. You're coming, too." "Huh?"
"It's fine. The shoes I'm wearing are one of those Seven Tools I was telling you about, meaning—"
No sooner had she spoken than Siesta scooped me up, set a foot on the windowsill, and—
"—they let me fly."
That day, the photo of a girl in a wedding dress holding a guy in a tuxedo in her arms and leaping into the sky blew up on social media.
And so the unforgettable adventure began
"So that bunny really was one of the Miss Hanakos of the Toilet?" The next day, at a certain café...
Siesta and I were discussing the facts behind the recent incident.
"That's right. This is from the drugs the students who'd stopped coming to school were taking."
After pausing for a sip of black tea, Siesta took the transparent bag from the folds of her skirt and set it on the table. It was what she'd picked up in the girls' bathroom on the third floor of the old school building yesterday.
"It resembles a type of stimulant. It gives a temporary euphoric sensation and boosts your concentration. At this school, it looks as though it started with the track and field team, then spread."
"I had no idea... Then you mean the students who are skipping were using that drug?"
"Yes. After all, such a remarkable effect comes with some pretty incredible side effects. Memory trouble, in particular. It'll probably take quite a while for them to recover completely."
"I see..."
On the bright side, though, recovery was possible, through a regimen of careful treatments. You could probably call that the one silver lining here.
"Then the fact that the Miss Hanakos were multiplying means..."
"It was probably because the drug was highly habit-forming. In order to get the money to buy more, they started to sell it themselves... I think that's how the Miss Hanakos multiplied more and more rapidly."
An illegal drug that could only be bought at the third stall from the door of the girls' bathroom on the third floor of the old school building. The rumor about Miss Hanako of the Toilet had been used as a code for those secret transactions. Of course, the number of students who'd known what it actually meant had probably been limited, but a few of them had been using that urban legend as a cover to commit crimes.
"As a matter of fact, I hear that drug is based on a pollen-like substance produced by a certain plant."
"So that's why it was 'Miss Hanako,' huh? 'Flower child.' What a dumb joke."
But that weak pun had created a shadow that had victimized multiple people.
I hadn't noticed the situation at all. I'd said that all I needed was for my days to be quiet and monotonous, and yet the flower-poison had already been eating away at that peaceful routine.
"Wait, wasn't Miss Hanako only supposed to appear at three in the morning? What was she doing at a cultural festival in broad daylight?"
"It just goes to show how desperate they were. They were watching for a chance to steal a march on their rivals and spread their drug around."
"I see. That rabbit was one of them, then?"
Thanks to the guilt of using illegal drugs, the Miss Hanakos had found it hard to go out in public. However, at the cultural festival, they'd be able to blend into the crowd. Not only that, but they'd probably assumed they wouldn't be noticed if they used full-body costumes to hide their identities.
"Siesta, you knew something was off about that rabbit right from the start, didn't you?"
"Yes. After all, going out of their way to wear a character suit with running shoes was practically broadcasting their identity."
Oh, right. I had heard that a lot of the Miss Hanakos were on the track
team. So Siesta had known the bunny was actually a drug-pushing track team member the moment she ran into it? The running shoes they'd worn, just in case they needed to flee, had ended up working against them.
"Then you slyly dropped a code word, established contact with the rabbit, and pretended you were a client."
Come to think of it, when Siesta had first accepted the flyer from the rabbit, she'd really emphasized being outside normal hours. She hadn't been talking about the haunted house's breaks. She'd meant a drug transaction at a time other than three in the morning. Then the rabbit had come straight to the site, but when they'd seen Siesta holding a gun, they'd realized it was a trap and bolted.
"First-rate detectives resolve incidents before they even occur, you see." I'd heard that line before.
As she sipped her tea, Siesta gave an elegant wink. "Well, I guess it wasn't much of a case for you, huh?"
After all, Siesta was an ace detective who fought in bitter, large-scale battles with pseudohumans. She could probably handle illicit drug deals before breakfast...before her afternoon siesta.
"However, I did hear that a certain organization was involved with the flower from this incident."
"'A certain organization'? You can't mean..." Wordlessly, Siesta nodded.
The secret society SPES. Of course. Where there were drugs, there was a boss—a mastermind. Before I'd even noticed, their shadows had stretched right into my neighborhood.
"So?" Setting her cup down on its saucer, Siesta looked at me. "What are you going to do?"
Her blue gaze caught me, and it wouldn't let go. I didn't have to ask what she meant.
She wanted to know if I was prepared. If I was going to climb out of my lukewarm bath, which was stone-cold now, and throw myself into combat. That was the silent question in her eyes.
In that case... "Siesta."
...I asked her a question of my own.
"If I become your assistant, what's in it for me? What can you provide?"
That was the starting point of this discussion, which I'd suggested. But I knew it was pointless to ask that.
I'd caught on now.
Why are you insisting on me? Why am I the one who has to be your assistant? It's because I get dragged into things. As long as you have that, incidents and trouble will come find you on their own.
Siesta was pursuing cases—or SPES, to be precise—and to her, I was the best human resource ever. The ace detective didn't want an assistant; she wanted cases.
She wasn't looking at me at all. Whatever she was about to offer me would be a bunch of random things she pulled out of the air. My questions had been asked with spiteful intentions, and I'd already decided to turn her down once I knew what the answers were.
Siesta squeezed her eyes shut tightly, and then... "I'll protect you."
...she opened them again, smiling softly as she went on.
"No matter what kind of trouble finds you, I'll protect you with my life.
And so..." she said. "Kimi— Be my assistant."
Siesta held her left hand out to me, across the table. "...Look at you, trying to swindle me into this."
Naturally, I wasn't about to take her up on that all-surface, no-substance proposal—
"Well, if you're going to go that far, I suppose I could go along with you."
—or so I thought, but the next thing I knew, I'd taken her hand.
Why, you ask? How the hell should I know? I'd like to ask somebody myself.
But for some reason...no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get that picture out of my mind—the sight of her leaping into the sky, wearing something she was ten years too young for.
"After all that complaining, now you're suddenly warm to the idea. I've never seen such an obvious male tsundere in my life."
"Don't pigeonhole your assistant into a random category."
"You're already acknowledging yourself as my assistant." "—Ghk. Figure of speech."
"Actually, we already had our answer when you showed up here, didn't we?" Siesta fluttered two airline tickets at me.
Yes, I should mention that the café we were sitting in was the airport lounge.
"...And what is an assistant to you, anyway? You keep throwing the word around."
"Hmm. How about you wake me up every morning, say, and make me brush my teeth, and dress me?"
"......... That's a hard no."
"You thought about it for quite a while, though. Did you think you might like that life?"
"Argh, shut up! I get it, all right?! As you wish: I'll be your assistant!" Then I smacked the table, stood up, and—
"So stay with me as long as I live!"
—lost control of my emotions and said what I was actually feeling. "Huh? Did you just propo—?"
"No! I take it back!"
Updated from fr𝒆ewebnov𝒆l.(c)om