Slowly but surely…

Chapter 1 (part 2/2) (volume 2, pages 41-62)

†

“…Did he leave?” Kokujouji Daikaku asked slowly, drinking tea in a tea room not far from the top floor of Mihashira Tower.

“I see.”

The elder presented quite a wondrous sight. His clothes were lordly, his hair and mustache was snow white, and the gaze of his eyes was way too sharp for an old man. Kokujouji was this country’s absolute ruler, and even his physique, being larger than average, testified to it, but he still fit into the small j.a.panese-style room easily.

The Usagi by his side was not exactly of small stature either, and normally you would expect a third party, were such present there, to feel oppressed in that cramped room, but in reality, it turned out to be the opposite and the two’s presence made an outsider perceive the room much bigger than it actually was. Perhaps, such an effect was created due to the sheer grandeur of Kokujouji Daikaku’s breath of mind and appearance.

“…Your Excellency,” the Usagi addressed his king after a lengthy silence. “May I humbly ask you a question, sir?”

“The Blue King was generous enough to back off and leave out of consideration for the honor of someone like me who forsook his name, his face and his individuality. That is why, despite being an Usagi, I found myself somewhat concerned with the situation.”

“Thank you, sir. Your Excellency, what are your reasons for the orders you gave us concerning the matter the Blue King brought up?”

That was a question as direct as direct got. All the suppositions Minakata Reishi had voiced earlier were correct. Following Kokujouji Daikaku’s instructions, the Usagi intentionally let a certain amount of the information they would normally regulate and suppress leak. The incidents with Akiyama and Doumyouji may have been only minor, but they only saw publicity in the first place because such was the will of Kokujouji Daikaku.

The Usagi knew better than anyone that the anger of the Blue King Munakata Reishi was righteous and fully founded. Only, the Usagi unconditionally believed his master despite that. He was certain that said master would not do it without a reason. Even when his orders were hard to understand, there must have been far sight and deep design behind them, always.

Toying with a tea utensil in his hand, Kokujouji finally uttered, “One reason.” It was only with this particular Usagi that he could afford to be that frank and direct in his answer. “I owed Kounomura Zen"ichi a favor.”

Kokujouji nodded silently.

The crisis erupted with an investment bank of a certain major country going under, and j.a.pan was among the countries heavily affected by it, but through unofficial a.s.sistance from Kounomura Zen"ichi a great number of banks and corporations had been saved. His clout and connections with relevant ministries and top players of the financial world were substantial, and they were getting only stronger.

“I admit that when he personally contacted me, I had a thought that he had what it took to be a king.”
“…” The Usagi waited for Kokujouji’s next words. Because that alone could not be the reason.

No one would argue about how much Kounomura Zen"ichi contributed to the country’s well-being. However, it was unthinkable for the man known as Kokujouji Daikaku to allow himself to condone what could only be called biased actions based solely on that.

Kokujouji continued with a question of his own, “What did you think of Munakata?”

The Usagi found it hard to answer.

“You have my permission to speak your mind frankly.”

“Kuku.” Unusual for him, Kokujouji Daikaku let out a chuckle.

Watching him, the Usagi recalled his talk with Munakata earlier. At the end of it, the king decided against finishing his sentence. But the Usagi had his guesses about what the Blue King had omitted: was the Gold King testing his mettle? he wanted to ask, the Usagi was sure.

The Usagi himself, too, suspected that that might have been the case. Timeless Palace and Scepter 4 shared one obvious common feature, and that was the fact that they prioritized this country’s public order above anything. Among the 7 kings, only the Gold and Blue kings shared this view and intention.

The differences were that Scepter 4’s work was more of public and official nature, while Timeless Palace handled things more clandestinely, as well as the fact that formal standings wise, Timeless Palace was ranked just a little higher than Scepter 4. So what if this elaborate method was Kokujouji Daikaku’s preferred test to see for himself the ability of the newest rookie King who was to work under him?

Except Kokujouji, as if seeing through the Usagi’s speculation, said in a tone overflowing with dignity, “Not even I understand a tenth of the Dresden Slate’s true nature.” He paused to take a sip of his green tea. “I don’t know if the Slate can uninstall a king and reselect another one to take his place. In which case…” Kokujouji’s eyes took on a sharp glint, “…everything will be weighted against one another - both when it comes to fate and when it comes to kings.”

The Usagi bowed silently. He sensed that asking any more questions would be overstepping his boundaries.

‘What if…’ he thought to himself. What if one of his master’s many expectations in regards to the treatment of this case involved the King of the Beginning, the Silver King who was still flying across the sky, looking down at the world beneath from high above. The Gold King Kokujouji Daikaku never ceased his attempts to get to know more about the Slate. For the sake of his friend and a dead woman. So there was a possibility that this case was the groundwork for that.

“…I’ve been drinking only tea lately. I wouldn’t mind having some coffee tomorrow,” Kokujouji suddenly said.
“As you wish, sir. I shall order it brewed for you tomorrow.” The Usagi gave another deep bow. For he had made a promise with himself to follow the Gold King to the ends of Earth.

†

Fushimi Saruhiko got going full throttle starting the next day. His peculiarity lay in the astounding contrast between his tendency to snidely protest or ignore whatever was requested of him, demonstrating his lacking manners for all to see, and the extraordinary speed and efficiency of his work when you did get him started. From the time when Fushimi Saruhiko got a.s.signed to the Special ops squad, the troops never made a secret of how much they condemned his att.i.tude and his tendency to address his King as simply “you” with hardly any politeness or respect to speak of.

At first, the list of those who reacted relatively negatively to Fushimi wasn’t limited only to Fuse; even Akiyama and Benzai couldn’t help the slightly displeased amazed expressions that twisted their features from time to time. In a sense, such a reaction was probably only natural, seeing that the att.i.tude Fushimi took towards Munakata Reishi, whom they served for a rather long time, was rather rude. It was only to be expected that they interpreted such an att.i.tude as Fushimi taking the whole of the Blue clan led by the Blue King for fools.

Gradually, however, Fushimi had managed to earn the acknowledgement from the other clansmen, including all of the special ops members, thanks to two factors.

The first one was that Fushimi had demonstrated before their own eyes his overwhelming data processing and practical work ability. He worked almost twice as much as an ordinary person would and produced four-five times more results. Seeing that, everyone in Scepter 4, an organization that tended to respect performance and ability more than social status or age, had acknowledged Fushimi before long.

The second factor had to do with why the younger members had accepted him. It was because Fushimi Saruhiko treated everyone equally. No matter what subordinate or senior - even if it was his own superior - or an outsider he was dealing with, he said the same words to them and acted in the exact same way towards them. It was all too likely that even if he met the most influential person on Earth, he would talk to them in his usual slightly fed-up and bored way. In that sense, it was safe to say that such an approach struck people as rational and commendable.

This time, too, in his habitual and very Fushimi-esque manner, Fushimi had arrived to certain conclusions. That’s what he said to Hidaka the night before:

“What we need to rack our brains about first is the scale of Kounomura’s organization, don’t you think?” That was the start of it as he had deduced certain things from there.

“Everyone’s falling for Kounomura Zen"ichi’s bluff way too easily,” he continued. “He may be a celebrity with one h.e.l.l of a smart head on his shoulders, but he’s no ghost or G.o.d. Just a human without any special abilities. So first, make sure you remember this at all times.”

Hidaka nodded vigorously at Fushimi’s words. It made sense that perhaps they all unconsciously fell for the false image Kounomura was projecting, allowing themselves to be manipulated. It was like Fushimi said: there was no denying that overestimating Kounomura had led to them losing sight of what their opponent actually was in reality. And that in itself was probably a psychological trap set up by Kounomura.

“If you look at what’s going on in a calm and rational manner,” Fushimi went on, “you’ll see that all what they’ve been doing up until now can be broken down only in two big types. The first one is them imitating Scepter 4’s work. And the second one is their disruptive activities against Scepter 4. See? Under no circ.u.mstances they depart from these two categories. And that’s gotta be because Kounomura so decided for himself, in that little activity policy plan of his.”

Fushimi emphasized his point, calling Hidaka’s special attention to it. “I don’t have to spell it out for you that these two types of their activities are what can give us necessary clues to grab Kounomura, currently in hiding, by the tail, do I?”

Fushimi smiled thinly. “To bring Kounomura down, for now we’ll exclude the first type from our investigation scope,” he declared with conviction.

To Hidaka’s subsequent question of “Why?” he replied, “According to the testimony of the criminals they’ve apprehended, Kounomura’s forces include a special a.s.sault unit made up of more than 20 trained strains, and he has them handle that sort of missions. To put it bluntly, right now we simply lack resources to deal with them, see?”

Hidaka couldn’t deny that painful truth.

Fushimi wasn’t finished though, “So what that leaves us with is their disruptive activities against Scepter 4 - well, let’s just call it what it is, that is, hara.s.sing us. Said hara.s.sing activities provide quite a few hints.”
“What hints?” Hidaka expression showed incomprehension. From where he stood, his coworkers had been put out of commission one after another before he knew it, and when it dawned on the rest of them, it was already too late, with the situation coming to a stalemate. To make it even worse, even his own boss, Munakata, showed signs of not being himself.

To his eyes, that particular fact almost fell into the domain of primitive "curse spells’ or "black magic’ rather than being a tactical result. It was as if Kounomura’s magic had been cast on the whole Scepter 4.

Fushimi let out a small sigh. “Like I said, Kounomura is leading you all by the nose. What he’s pulling off here is a creative mix of deception and bluff. One thing though. He did his homework thoroughly, and his research on us is flawless.”

“That’s right, research. I admit that he’s sharp and shrewd like no other. He likely can accurately read all of our special ops squad’s members like an open book, predicting with ease our psychological state and actions we’d take. He just wouldn’t be able to corner us like he has if he couldn’t do that, simple as that. So here’s a question for you. How did he get his hands on the ma.s.sive amount of data that allowed him to a.n.a.lyze us so thoroughly? Since when has he been in contact with us? Was he that close to us as to have the opportunity to get to know us so intimately? No, he wasn’t, was he.”

Hidaka stayed silent.

“That’s why I’m saying that you don’t think enough,” Fushimi informed him with a cold look. “Use your head. He may be an intellectual monster alright, but even a monster can’t do an a.n.a.lysis if he doesn’t have the necessary data for it, naturally?”
“Ah,” Hidaka’s head snapped up. “Could it be…?”

Fushimi nodded. “Yeah, bullseye. He has just the right guy for that kind of job. That is, one of his followers must be a strain that can read a person’s mind under certain conditions.”

“Hey, it’s not like he’s breaking the rules here, now is he? You guys have just been a.s.suming things and seeing Kounomura through the filter of your own illusions. That’s how he’s made such progress in the first place. With a strain that can see inside a person’s mind at his disposal, he started out by doing a thorough a.n.a.lysis on each of us. That’s why we so guilelessly fell into his trap.”

After a pause, Hidaka finally whispered, “…I see,” although it sounded closer to a moan than anything. Things had started to add up to him.

Fushimi sighed and took out a stack of paper. “And this is what we have on it. It’s the investigation report on strains with that kind of ability and their family lines that I’ve compiled and printed out in advance. Using this and the info I have on my laptop as our clues, we’ll get going for real tomorrow.”
“Fushimi-san!” Hidaka’s eyes shone impossibly bright. And he was dangerously close to jumping Fushimi and hugging the dear life out of him. How great it was to have this person back!

Fushimi only let out a grievous sigh, the longest yet, and shook his head. He had a lot on his plate to take care of.

†

What Fushimi Saruhiko did first was to formulate several conditions and narrow down the list of suspects to 20 names. Then, after a preliminary examination of each on several points, he managed to narrow it down to only 4 people. Investigating them further, including tailing them, yielded results and left him with a sole possible candidate. All of that didn’t take him even a full day - his detective ability was that great.

Since time was not something he had in spades, the next step Fushimi took was putting the target under thorough surveillance, that is, he moved on to a full-blown stakeout.

Having skimmed through the target’s profile once, Fushimi had memorized it perfectly.

Male. 21 years old. Born in Tokyo. Father is a securities salesman, mother is a piano teacher. After graduating from high school, the suspect enrolled in university with the goal to become a photographer but dropped out. Presently works as a part-timer, attending a vocational photography school. Left the parents’ home and lives in a shared house.

Fushimi kept watching this young man via the state-of-art tech as well as good old spying, running a thorough a.n.a.lysis of his life. As a result… he got incredibly exhausted.

The everyday life of that guy, named Marumoto Keiji, seriously got on his nerves.

That Marumoto lived with 3 more young men and 3 young women in what’s known as a shared house. Their residence was a freestanding remodeled house, white and stylish. In addition to 8 rooms, it had a restroom, a bathroom, a recreational room and a living room. The furnishings looked like they belonged in a holiday house by the beach. The beams were left exposed, and from them hang a hammock, sh.e.l.ls of a.s.sorted colors decorated the shelves. On the wall, a corkboard was put up, with some of the memorable photos sporting silly comments in fluorescent pen.

The recreational room had a billiards table and a darts board illuminated by decorative lighting. Further in the back, a slightly dated gumball machine and a mini fridge filled with cola could be found. The walls were plastered with old Hollywood movie posters and styled to resemble those of an old-fashioned American house.

Such was the s.p.a.ce Marumoto Keiji lived in, spending his life in that shared house.

In the morning of the day Fushimi dedicated to spying on him, he seemed to have a day off, as he drank a smoothie he had made himself by throwing banana, apple and green and yellow vegetables into the mixer and did some easy yoga on a yoga mat. After that, he climbed into his hammock and started reading a book. It was a small book, a collection of landscape photos with poetry slapped on.

Before long, the other residents got out of bed and showed up. Even though they lived in a shared house, they all looked impeccably fashionable. A model in the making, a future professional surfer, an actress wannabe… One prominent point this dwelling’s residents had in common was that they all were still n.o.bodies. They were fellow dream chasers that pursued said dreams together, sometimes encouraging each other, other times competing, still other times clashing.

On that day, a lot had transpired in that house.

One of the guys and one of the girls who liked each other had chosen not to pursue that love and to stay friends for the sake of their dreams. They gave each other a hug, shed a few tears and broke up.

One of their friends who had been wandering the world for half a year had come back. Tanned and a little st.u.r.dier than before, he said, “I’m back,” and the girl aspiring to be an artist that was chilling in the living room handed him a gla.s.s of mojito as she smiled at him, “Welcome back. Have you found what you were searching for?” she asked.

“Good for you.” The girl casually saluted to him with two fingers.

Fushimi felt a distinct pang of irritation. "These people…’

In a room of an apartment building across the street from the residence his target lived in where he was being in the middle of his stakeout, Fushimi found himself tapping his foot restlessly.

"Do they live like that every friggin day?’

By the minute, all that was happening in that house looked progressively more melodramatic, bittersweet and complete with ridiculous amounts of glitter. In fact, Fushimi was willing to bet that these people’s brains were ridiculously glittery, too.

"They’re so…’

Fushimi couldn’t help scratching his head. His skin was crawling, so he had to. Their lifestyle, thought patterns, speech - everything evoked a strong rejection in Fushimi.

"They’re so unbelievably and revoltingly disgusting!’

Indeed, these were people that were the exact opposite of what Fushimi Saruhiko was. So much that they gave him allergic hives. If he had to watch them for more than 2 days, his body just might not hold.

Fushimi was seriously getting worried about his health, but luckily for him, he had managed to confirm Marumoto’s true colors surprisingly fast. The event that made it possible took place during a barbecue party to celebrate the return of the aforementioned resident of the house after his wanderings.

Marumoto, busy snapping pictures of his gently smiling friends, some with a jug of foreign beer, others with a c.o.c.ktail in hand, suddenly pointed his camera straight at the spot from where Fushimi was watching them. It went without saying that Fushimi was very careful about hiding that he was staking them out. And yet, without any hesitation whatsoever Marumoto focused his camera on the window of the room Fushimi was in and clicked the shutter a few times.

’!’ Fushimi, watching him in binoculars, got startled, and Marumoto made a show of pointing a finger at him and said with his lips only, “Bang!” topping it off with a wink. Then he went back to his friends like nothing had happened.

"That f.u.c.ker!’ Fushimi’s mouth twisted into a crooked sneer. ’…“I know you’re there”, is that it, huh? I say bring it!’

His irritation got much worse, to the point where it felt almost refreshing.

†

Late at night on the same day, Matsumoto Keiji casually walked out of the shared house with a camera in hand. The excuse he told his friends was, “I want to take a few picture of the night city.” He walked, taking deserted backstreets with no hesitation.

And there, Fushimi Saruhiko in full uniform blocked his way, looking so natural about it as if he was waiting for someone he had a prior arrangement about meeting with.

Marumoto Keiji didn’t look surprised in the slightest.

Fushimi, standing in the spot of white light from a street light, smirked faintly, “…I see. I guess I wasn’t wrong about you being a mind reader.”
“…” Marumoto Keiji stared at Fushimi with a troubled smile. “Actually, it’s not like I read in your mind that this would happen. It’s just that you had that air about you that said come on out already. And so I did, because you know, a man has to rise up to that kind of challenge.”

A certain thought had occurred to Fushimi again.

This guy’s strangely regular features, a nicely done stylish crew cut, chic clothes and that tone of voice that made no secret of how full of himself he was… Fushimi loathed anything and everything about the guy with pa.s.sion.

“I don’t plan to have a long chitchat with you, punk. Admit the following. You are Kounomura Zenichi’s lackey and a strain who can read minds. On Kounomura’s orders, you’ve been snooping around to provide the data allowing to a.n.a.lyze what actions the Scepter 4 troops would take. Do you admit to it?”

“…Which means you admit to what I listed?”

“I don’t give a d.a.m.n about your convoluted monologues sounding like poorly written J-Pop lyrics. Answer only in yes or no. Are you Kounomura’s lackey?”

“Alright.” Fushimi gave up, in more senses than one. Establishing communication with this guy was absolutely impossible. “I’ll just have to beat you up first and then haul your a.s.s where I need it.”

He drew his saber. Matsumoto grinned and suddenly pointed the camera at Fushimi. Click, the camera’s shutter released.

The quick bright flash made Fushimi grimace.

Marumoto was carefree as ever, “Sorry, buddy. This is my ability. Like you’ve guessed, I can read minds when I click the camera’s shutter. And…” He closed his eyes. “Uh-huh. See, when I do this, I can get the picture pretty accurately. I see. So you got into a big fight with your very precious friend.” His eyes opened again. “Okay! I know! I’ll tell you how to patch things up with your friend!”

"I’m gonna kill this f.u.c.ker,’ Fushimi thought. Kicking the ground, he was about to take a swing with his saber.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Marumoto clicked the camera’s shutter again. A flash much brighter than before flared.

“Ugh!”

That light was easily comparable to the effect of a stun grenade specially designed to steal a person’s ability to move, and it made even Fushimi freeze.

“c.r.a.p!” He swung his sword blindly but hit nothing.
“Sorry,” Marumoto’s voice, strangely soft yet serious, came from a good distance away. “I knew via my ability that you would do that. So I came prepared.”

The sound of an engine roaring to life reverberated throughout the neighborhood.

By the time Fushimi was finally able to see again, all that came into view was Marumoto’s rapidly disappearing back as he rode a bike in the distance.

“!” Fushimi punched the nearest wall, then took a deep long breath. And that was all it took for him to regain control.

Sheathing his saber, he fished out his PDA and called Munakata. Munakata didn’t answer, so Fushimi left him a voice message, reporting what had happened in detail. “As such, I will now be in pursuit of the target. Regards,” he finished.

“Tch,” clicking his tongue once, he slouched and started walking unhurriedly.

Needless to say, Fushimi was well aware that he was being baited. To make Fushimi bite, Marumoto was intentionally making himself stand out as he ran away. However, there was also no doubt that this presented a valuable clue. As loathe as he was to admit it, Fushimi hadn’t exactly been given the choice to ignore the runaway and let him escape.

So he decided that when he found Marumoto, he first would sock him a good one and only then arrest him.