The Detective is Already Dead

Chapter 95: Chapter 1.8

The future entrusted to a neighbor

The fight seemed to last an eternity; we couldn't let our guards down for a moment. In terms of actual time, though, the battle didn't even last a few minutes. Finally, with a brief howl from the monster, it was over.

"Did that do it?"

Siesta and Hel were panting, shoulders heaving. As I watched their backs, I uncurled my clenched fists.

"...Hff...hff... Your pet is...far too...undisciplined."

"...! ...Hff. They do say little ones that cause you the most trouble are the cutest."

As they bantered, their eyes were fixed on the shopping mall, which had fused with the huge tree. Betelgeuse was lying at its foot. Siesta's bullets and Hel's slashes had finally made the walking disaster stop moving.

"I was impressed you slid right up to the enemy and hit it with a bullet at the end there."

"Well, I didn't want you to get all the glory." "You always did hate to lose, hero."

Even as Hel and Siesta argued they exchanged a low-five without turning to face each other. They weren't enemies, and they weren't allies. They'd only shared a common goal temporarily, and their united front had succeeded. But now...

"Be careful," I told them, moving closer. What would happen now that

they'd defeated the biological weapon? I knew better than anyone: I'd taken damage from it before.

"The pollen."

Siesta narrowed her eyes, gazing into the distance. Large flower buds had begun to sprout from Betelgeuse's corpse. A year ago, after the fight with Hel, I'd been hit by the pollen from those flowers and lost my memories of the previous few hours. I'd forgotten the truth of Siesta's death and the feelings she'd entrusted to me and spent a year soaking in tepid routine.

The same thing was about to happen now. We had to cut down those buds before they opened—

"Something's wrong."

Just as I was about to move, Hel stopped me. The next instant, the buds that had sprouted all over Betelgeuse began wilting en masse.

At first, I thought Siesta and Hel had beat Betelgeuse so thoroughly that it no longer had the strength to make them bloom. But when I considered who'd made Betelgeuse in the first place, the answer was obvious.

"—Seed."

Beneath the great tree, an unsteady humanoid silhouette appeared beside the fallen monster.

It was Seed, the parent of all the clones.

The hole in his abdomen was closing, as if the cells were regenerating. A few of his tentacles had crawled over the ground and absorbed energy from Betelgeuse. Seed could share his own power with the pseudohumans, and he could also take it back.

"Father," Hel murmured. Her black hair fluttered in the wind, and I couldn't see her face.

"—Why?" Seed's voice sounded staticky. "Hel, why are you on their side? What's become of your mission? Do you intend to wipe out our seeds?" Seed was seeing his former right-hand woman again for the first time in a year, but he felt nothing. He only spoke to her coldly. "Come fight for me once more." "That was my plan all along. ...At least, I wish I could tell you it was." Hel took a few steps toward Seed. "Unfortunately, I can't beat this ace detective. I got a good look at her during the fight, and I'm sure of it. As I am now, I

can't inflict a single lethal wound on her."

As Hel coolly analyzed the difference in strength between herself and Siesta, her expression softened. She knew better than anyone that she was

currently injured.

"Father, we lose." With that, Hel announced the final result of the long battle between SPES and the Ace Detective. She'd determined that Seed couldn't beat Siesta at this point, either.

"—In that case, Hel, become my vessel." But the answer Seed found was different. For a moment, all three of us froze up.

"That is your mission and your reason for existing."

...He was right. Hel had originally been a candidate vessel for Seed. Until now, Siesta had been inside her, keeping Seed out, but now that the two of them had separated, Seed would be able to use either one.

"Me, be your vessel, Father...?" Hel's red eyes wavered. Ever since birth

—ever since she'd come into being as a new personality inside Natsunagi— Seed's orders had been her only guiding star. To Hel, they had been an absolute, unchanging spell that had bound her. All of her personal principles had been influenced by him.

Now, after a full year, she'd received another mission from Seed. In theory, fighting Siesta and winning was impossible, and she could refuse. However, it was possible for her to serve as Seed's foundation. So the idea of Hel rejecting Seed's order was—

"I refuse."

Hel wasn't the one who had answered.

Startled, she turned and looked at the white-haired detective.

"Why would you...?" Hel didn't know why Siesta was protecting her. What situation would make shielding her former enemy worth it? "No idea." Unusually, Siesta's tone was rather childish.

"I don't want that. That's all."

The Siesta who'd operated on logic would have considered that conclusion unreasonable.

But Siesta was familiar with human emotions now.

It had to be because she'd spent the past year in the mind of a girl whose feelings were more passionate than anyone else's.

"—I see."

When Hel heard that, she smiled. It wasn't the conniving smile of one

forming a plot. Her face was bright, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

"I'm sorry, Father. Seed, I mean."

Then Hel gave a response to the mission that had been inside her all these years.

"I'm choosing a future in which the people around me will smile." The saber in Hel's right hand turned toward Seed.

This was the conclusion she'd come to. She'd once agonized over the fact

that she was no one, asking herself why she'd been born, but now—in entrusting the proof of her existence to others, she'd found her answer.

To Hel, those "others" were mirrors who would look at the self she wasn't able to see, viewing her from another perspective.

Just as Siesta had tried to protect her from the enemy. Just as Natsunagi had taught her about the passion she'd been unconsciously harboring. Hel had entrusted her course of action to her friends who understood her better than she knew herself.

"Seed. With the sword you gave me, I'll put an end to you."

Hel's red eyes flashed, and those words acquired a soul. It had nothing to do with her seed's ability, though. Hel had vowed to steer this story to its conclusion.

"—So it is as I thought."

Beside Betelgeuse's withering body, Seed took Hel's defection quietly. There was no longer anyone on the battlefield to help him. And yet he was still here. Seed's instinct was to bear descendants; what future would he choose on this battlefield?

"If the parent dies, he can't leave any children." Seed's lightless eyes began to glow dark violet.

"Assistant, are you ready?" "Yeah. Have been for a year."

It was the beginning of the final battle between SPES and the Ace Detective.

The unhappy prince

Seed had declared his intent to fight again, to protect his instinct to leave descendants. He seemed to have finished absorbing the biological weapon's energy; his body bulked up, and thick blood vessels pulsed. Enormous tentacles grew from his shoulders; he reminded me of a Chinese dragon.

"Siesta!" Watching the enemy prepare for war, I gripped my gun. We were past the point where I could afford to be dead weight.

"Yes, let's go."

Siesta and I attacked from his right, while Hel dashed in from the left, holding her saber at waist level. Right now, dealing with those tentacles came first. Splitting up, we each targeted one, and—

"I don't need this right ear anymore."

In the next instant, Seed's right ear flew off.

For a brief moment, the sight stopped us in our tracks, but then— "I won't let you do it."

Realizing what was happening, Siesta fired at Seed.

"That ear had already fulfilled its purpose. It's better to use its energy for other things."

Before Seed had finished speaking, the tentacle growing from his right shoulder morphed into an enormous silver sword and repelled Siesta's bullet.

"Then take this!"

With a loud metallic crash, Hel's red saber knocked the tentacle away. That was all it did, though; she couldn't sever it.

"...!"

The tentacle was even harder than Betelgeuse's scales, and Hel was forced into a one-sided defensive battle.

"Next, my left eye. I don't need it, either." As Seed spoke, the light vanished from his purple eye. "It lost its power seven years ago, in any case."

Then the tentacle on his left shoulder split into a dozen feelers. As if they had wills of their own, they lunged at Siesta.

"—! There's too many of them!"

Siesta tried to fight back with her musket, but even when she shot them off, the countless thin limbs started regenerating in seconds. Like Hel, she was forced to concentrate on defense.

"...So it's down to me, huh?"

With Hel and Siesta pinned, I was the only one left in this fight. Using Chameleon's transformation ability, I blended into the scenery. Seed's right

ear had had extremely sharp hearing, just like Bat's. Now that he'd lost that, he wouldn't be able to find me easily. Invisible, I raced toward the enemy.

"And my right eye. I'll discard that as well," Seed murmured while his tentacles kept up their attack. The purple light vanished from his right eye, and—

"...?!"

Just then, the ground jolted under me. A fissure? Maybe the seeds he'd sown had sprouted again; I tripped over the cracked ground, and then...

"...! Ghk—Ow..."

A thin briar had sprung up and skewered my right foot. "Assistant!"

Siesta tried to run to me, but a massive wave of tentacles attacked, blocking her way. Like me, Hel had been trapped by the cracked ground, and she was desperately fighting the silver tentacle.

"...So he doesn't need sight or hearing, huh?"

Using my knife, I cut through the briar, then managed to get back on my feet somehow. In that case... "It's all on you, Siesta."

After all this time, we didn't need words. I just made eye contact with her, then launched myself off the asphalt toward a tentacle.

"...!"

A sharp pain ran through my wounded right foot. It didn't matter. Natsunagi must have felt the same fierce agony when she'd faced this enormous evil all by herself.

I pushed through the pain and kept going, using the countless tentacles as footholds. Traveling along a path of tentacles Siesta had made that led to the enemy, I—

"I can catch the scent of human blood no matter where it is."

Just before I reached Seed, a tentacle dug into my side. He'd lost his sight, but Seed's sense of smell was as sharp as Cerberus's, and he'd used that to locate me.

"You are not the one I gave this to. I'm reclaiming it." "....! Gahk—Hah..."

Seed's thin tentacle raked through my insides and pulled something

"Chameleon's...seed..."

Extracting the black lump that had been buried in me, Seed absorbed it into

his own body through his tentacle. I collapsed before I even reached him. "...! Assistant!"

It was Siesta's voice. She rushed toward me, weaving through the horde of tentacles.

"D-don't."

It was too convenient—my crisis galvanizing Siesta and helping her knock all the tentacles away. If the enemy's attacks had thinned out at a time like this, it meant...

"...Oh."

Maybe it was the effect of the reptile's seed, which he'd taken from me and absorbed. Seed's tentacles had combined into one, and it transformed into a huge snake, sprang at Siesta from behind, and bit her on the neck.

"S-Siesta..."

She collapsed beside me, bleeding all the way from her neck to her shoulders. "...It looks like...I blew it."

"I told you...you freak out too much when I'm in trouble..."

Back when Hel had kidnapped me, Siesta had completely fallen to pieces as she raced to the rescue. The ace detective is usually cool and collected, but whenever this happens, all that goes out the window. Man, I swear...

"...I suspect you like me way too much." "Are you stupid, Kimi?"

Even as we swapped jokes, we lay on the asphalt, our faces twisted in pain. "—I knew it." My vision was blurry, but I could see Seed looking down at us with blind eyes. "Because of your emotions, you humans expose yourselves to mortal danger. They threaten your survival instinct. How foolish," he said. There wasn't a trace of anger or pity in his voice. He just

spoke coldly, as if he were stating a simple fact.

"You had emotions once too, remember?" I was gritting my teeth so hard I thought they'd shatter as I tried to get up. "You just gave them all away as you made descendants, and then you forgot. Way back when, even you—"

"Yes, that's right. And so the primordial seed evolved."

"...?" My mind was becoming hazy from the pain in my side, and I couldn't follow what he was saying.

"When it comes to protecting one's survival instinct, emotions are unnecessary. They are counterproductive, in fact. That is why this body discarded them in the course of its evolution."

...So that was how Seed saw it. Instinct and emotions were different. In fact, emotions threatened the survival instinct, the thing that was most important to Seed... Or to any living creature, actually. As far as he was concerned, losing them was a step in the right direction.

I had no words that could convince him otherwise. If I hadn't been bleeding, if my body had still done what I'd told it to, would I have managed to argue back? ...No, maybe nothing I came up with logically would have worked. What would that girl have done at a time like this? Nagisa Natsunagi, who'd always fought with passion—

"—You haven't lost your emotions yet."

A sharp voice split the air. Still on my knees, I turned to look back. The girl who stood there shared a face with the person I'd been thinking of. She'd stabbed her red sword into the ground and had both hands clasped around its hilt.

"You have one left. Just one."

The uniformed girl was covered in cuts, but she confronted the world's enemy with dignity. Beside her lay the silver tentacle, finally broken.

"What are you talking about?" Seed's blind eyes gazed at Hel.

Biting her lip, Hel spoke about what had happened back then, telling him things even I hadn't known about. "That day, when Nagisa Natsunagi slashed you, you said, 'You too, Hel?' Meaning..." She squeezed the hilt of the saber, the same blade Natsunagi had used that day, and stated her conclusion:

"You were caught off guard by my rebellion, and it made you sad."

The moment Hel said that, Seed's plants all began to wither at once. His sightless eyes widened.

"Our relationship was built on commands. You gave them; I took them. That was all it was." Quietly, Hel described the connection she and Seed had formed over the course of several years. It was similar to the way Siesta and I hadn't been lovers or friends, just odd business partners. "As far as you were concerned, I was a convenient pawn. You didn't tell me what the sacred text really was. I didn't even know you planned to use me as your vessel."

...She was right. When I'd met Hel a year ago, she'd had a blind belief in Seed. As a separate personality that dwelled inside Natsunagi, she'd had no choice. If she hadn't created some sort of bond, she wouldn't have been able

to find any meaning in her own existence.

However, when Natsunagi had acquired Siesta's heart, the unconscious Hel had shared memories with Siesta, and she'd realized that Seed had been using her all along.

"I was angry, and I felt betrayed. Maybe that's why I didn't put up much of a fight even after the detective sealed me inside Natsunagi, and why I'm turning my blade on you now that I'm finally free. However..." Hel lowered her saber. "I realized that you and I were the same. I tried to win your trust so that I would have some bond connecting me to this world. In the same way, you really just wanted someone to stay with you."

It had to have been a miscalculation on Seed's part: In order to survive on this planet, he'd gotten too close to mankind. He'd accidentally acquired human emotions, even though they clashed with his survival instinct. But then, in the process of creating pseudohumans, Seed had gradually lost both his power and those feelings.

The emptiness he felt at that loss was far greater than when he'd had nothing to lose. It was like when I'd lost my memories of how Siesta had really died. Or when Siesta had forgotten she'd known Alicia and Natsunagi. Or the way Natsunagi had gone so long without knowing who she was.

Seed was like us. Every time he created a child, he'd lost emotions, and the widening hole in his heart had shocked him more than anyone.

"Father."

Hel called Seed by that name again.

Letting go of her weapon, she took a step closer to him, then another. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying as she shouted, "You trusted me, so I'll say it in your place: Father, you're no monster! You wanted to be human; you couldn't possibly be a monster! You've lost your sight, your strength, you've whittled down your life, all to protect your children. The emotion that drove you is called—"

Just then, a tentacle that was no longer silver shot from Seed's right shoulder and pierced Hel's left one.

" !"

Hel had on a pained expression, but she picked up her saber and cut the tentacle away. "Fa...ther..."

"Don't. That's no longer Seed." Siesta squeezed the words out, her hands covering her wounded neck. "His mind has been taken over...by that

Ouroboros."

Siesta looked up at the "snake" that had grown from Seed's left shoulder. "Right ear, left eye, right eye, and then...your mind."

In a voice like low static, the serpent spoke. It was as if it had erased what little awareness and emotions Seed had left and now was in control. "Ouroboros" was the name of Seed's survival instinct itself.

"—Blood. There's not enough blood."

Seed's head hung limply. In his place, Ouroboros's golden eyes turned to glare at us.

"Assistant..." "Siesta..."

Siesta and I reached out for each other. Neither of us was able to stand yet. "...Ghk."

Hel stood in front, shielding us. Ouroboros sprang at her, baring its huge poisonous fangs—and just as my hazy eyes saw a spray of blood, I blacked out.