Chapter 28: The Ryabolsk Serial Murders

An unprecedented catastrophe: pigeons endowed with the Cult's intelligence had attacked criminals. It was a misunderstanding, in truth—and yet a member of the Cult really was staying in the city.

"Talk, Klein. Why did the Cult betray us?"

All she had done was breathe, and suddenly she was the hero who had saved the city. The one thrust into the role of protagonist was utterly dumbfounded.

"So... I'm not even sure I'm understanding this right. I mean. Killer pigeons attacked your people, is that it? Right? Yeah."

"Tell it straight, or I can't guarantee your life. I'm telling you, I barely talked the executives down from killing you."

The Cult. A heretical sect that had deified one mad Grand Master and propped him up as a god. They fed perfectly healthy people to demonic beasts, or killed them by dragging them into every sort of experiment, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and they researched the crossbreeding of animals with humans, and of humans with demonkin. Evil among evils. A public enemy of this world, a target that had to be annihilated.

And yet even a cult that seemed to pick out only the most useless endeavors still reckoned efficiency. Load human intelligence into pigeons and massacre people? The Cult already had more than one or two weapons built for slaughter. Why go to the trouble?

"Why would we do something that inefficient? We barely even use birdbrains in our experiments. Because they're birdbrains."

"Then what the hell is this rumor?"

But the Black Bears, who had taken the worst losses of any of the mafias, felt deeply wronged. Between last night and this afternoon they had lost more than seventeen members. A few years ago they had won a great victory in the large-scale uprising in the streets of Ryabolsk City and reigned as the city's largest mafia—only for their people to be attacked out of nowhere.

To win that uprising, the boss of the Black Bears had joined hands with the Cult, rushing into loan-shark money to punch through a blocked flow of funds. The relationship had run on unbroken, and they had gotten along without trouble right up to the present day. Told out of the blue that the Cult had attacked the organization, the gullible boss could not possibly let it slide.

"A serial killer out of the Cult... using pigeons to pick off only criminals? The more I hear, the less sense it makes. You do mean people like us, right? And why are you taking it out on me! If you didn't want to die, you should have lived decently from the start!"

"Klein. Watch your mouth. It's true we mind the Cult's mood, but a little brat like you—we can erase you from the world without a sound."

The boss flinched the moment he said it. The slip had been born of the feeling that he could not lose to some glaringly green kid. But the boss was fifty this year. Being looked down on by Klein, still in her late teens, was bad enough; the eyes of the organization members at his side weighed heavier still.

"Whoa, scary. This is bad. Klein doesn't want to die..."

Klein giggled, fiddling with her long, trailing light-green hair.

"Then this is what Klein should do! Klein doesn't want to die, so Klein's gonna kill Mister first!"

A cunning devil, when it smiles, drags up the corners of its mouth and lets its eyelids fall. Just like Klein, lingering in front of the boss and grinning.

"Why? Isn't this it? Klein thought this was what you wanted."

The boss's heart lurched. He had never meant to make an enemy of Klein. The executives were simply furious over this business, and he had thought to calm them while squeezing funds out of the Cult. Sensing the current turn bad, he hurried to close the matter.

"Tsk. Enough. Get going. I'll talk the executives down myself."

Klein's eyes narrowed to thin slits.

"I don't need that, though?"

Ordinary people do not flip their words as easily as turning a palm. Still less do they pass from play into sincerity—and rising from a joke into killing intent was vanishingly rare. That was what a bond of trust was. Faith, and a guarantee, that the other would not attack you on a whim. An unspoken compact that let you turn your back. Tacit consent.

But nothing of the sort could ever work on those who belonged to the Cult. Expectation and trust were things one offered only to human beings.

Klein hopped down from the boss's broad desk. The long veil on her head streamed out, and the vestments of a high Shrine Maiden of the Cult—cut close to a modern bunny-girl costume—showed their full figure. Spare for a grown woman, and yet with belly, back, and legs entirely bare, the outfit was lewdness itself. They claimed it had been simplified for ease of movement, but it was unmistakably the cult leader's taste.

Even looking at it, the boss felt not arousal but only fear. The day that long whip-shaped sword at her waist was swung, everyone in the room would be ground up like meat shoved into a grinder.

"How should I torment you before I kill you~."

That was the moment.

Crash!

Something smashed the window and burst into the room. The organization members, already wound tight, drew guns and weapons—and in came a formation of pigeons, fluttering, fluttering. One of them must have botched the landing; it flipped over on the floor in a complete fuss.

The instruments of this serial murder case, and the monstrous birds that had reduced the victims' eyes and napes to rags.

White pigeons.

"Wait. Aren't these those pigeons?!"

"It's the killer pigeons! Everyone, attack!"

Fortunately, everyone finished readying their attack before the pigeons showed killing intent.

Bang!

A bullet punched clean through a pigeon. Not a single scratch marred its fair white form. All the pointless attack accomplished was to turn the creatures' eyes red.

"What? Why is it fine..."

"What are you doing, damn it! Shoot! Shoot more! Light them up!!"

The organization member who had fired first became the target and rolled across the floor.

"Hyak—gyaaaah!"

The others swung iron bars and crowbars, trying to drive the pigeons down, and succeeded only in destroying the skull and the reproductive function of the man already sprawled on the floor.

"The fuck—why won't they die!"

"Aaaaaah!!"

The pigeons were vividly real, and their beaks dealt physical damage, yet attacks from this side did not work in the slightest. To humans who almost never saw a spirit in a lifetime, it felt like dreaming.

"They're spirits?"

In the boss's room, now a complete wreck, there was exactly one person. Only Klein of the Cult saw through to the truth.

"Why would someone who handles spirits, of all things, come all the way to the hind end of the continent to hunt criminals?"

Klein shot out through the broken window. Kicking off the balcony rail, her body rose with a rush, traced a diagonal upward, and landed on the roof of a nearby building.

"Now I'm curious what kind of girl this is."

Lupin was puzzled.

She had climbed a tree grown to the size of a respectable high-rise, meaning to send the pigeons off, and not a few minutes later a crowd came swarming in around it. At first she thought they had all turned up together for some kind of camping trip. Fortunately, the miserable performance of their oil lamps meant Lupin was never disturbed. For someone about to scatter pigeons in search of Secret Safes, it was a tremendous mercy.

Looking closer, though, she seemed to recognize a few faces. Police and detectives from the investigation headquarters.

"Don't tell me the culprit of the murder case is here?"

Of course, the curiosity that flared was nothing but a spark in an instant. Lupin was in the middle of the most important routine of her day. During Secret Safe time, she opened only Secret Safes. The most obvious piece of common sense in the world.

"Open them quick, get back, and slip in on the side."

Her heart thumped with the thrill of an enormous incident. Hanging in the tree, Lupin stretched her right hand toward the sky.

A flock of shining pigeons poured out in a glittering rush. Some of those scattering in every direction abandoned the scatter and dropped toward the ground all at once.

"Ah."

All at once the ground around the tree's roots became a mess. A few people went running from the pigeons—and wasn't a brawl breaking out?

Lupin marked on her map the positions of the eight flocks that had flown toward the city, then turned her gaze downward again.

"No. Hey, kids, if you attack the police like that..."

She offered the line with worry, but there was no way the spirit pigeons would listen to Lupin, low as she was in both spirit affinity and avian affinity. Did I shut off avian affinity for nothing? Should I lift the block even now? She was still turning it over when she set the thought aside.

"...What. It was focus fire."

Looking closely, the pigeons were attacking exactly two people. Even when others beside them hit the birds, shoved them, and beat them away, the pigeons did not turn on those people as well.

Without a single proper conversation with a spirit, Lupin arrived at a great truth. Don't tell me spirit pigeons have favorite cuts of human meat. Weren't pigeons supposed to be creatures that aren't picky? Or is it something like that—they pop trash bags and scavenge vomit, so among humans they pick out the garbage to eat?

Chase a Secret Safe and you were bound to end up attacking villains. Lupin, still failing to grasp that obvious truth, was privately marveling at her own speculation as though it were profound.

"Well then. Shall we go open some treasure chests."

Lupin locked onto her target and deliberately leaned forward. When her head was angled just a little above parallel with the ground, she drove her legs out hard——— bang! Her body launched like a missile, and for a little while she could fly.

It was also why she kept clambering up to high places. Tag a target anywhere, and moving was easy!

Come to think of it, there was that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠one phantom thief who favored white clothes, and a paraglider popped right out of his back, boing, boing. Somehow that manga's world felt more fantastical than the Elysium Lupin actually lived in. Was there a pocket behind his torso? Things kept springing out. Spin the dial on his sneakers, rrrrip, and he was firing a ship's cannon loaded with soccer balls. In one episode he simply sprinted up an entire tower on suspenders that stretched without end——.

Ting.

"Ghk."

Lupin's body, sailing along perfectly well, plummeted as if it had snagged on something. She fell tracing a crooked spiral.

Thud—crash!

Lupin, who had gone rolling, was on her feet at once. Thank goodness the breakfall had worked. Otherwise she would have been planted upright in a flower bed, looking ridiculous.

"Sheesh. What?"

Setting her stance to rights, Lupin immediately found the source of the strange metallic sound. Something shaped like a whip had caught on her scabbard.

"What is this. A whip?"

"Hi!"

No sooner had a stranger's hand settled on her shoulder than Lupin's sword left its sheath. The blade cut something, and her body carried two steps forward with the stroke. The distance between the stranger and Lupin was about three paces.

It was a girl in a veil fitted with triangular animal ears. She was fiddling with the black veil and the light-green hair that had been sheared away on a diagonal.

Her arm's perfectly fine.

What Lupin had aimed for was the arm the girl had laid across her shoulder. It was flawless, without a single wound. A strong one. She had blocked, or she had dodged.

"Wow, you're really fast! What's your name? I'm Klein!"

Lupin did not usually dislike polite people. By tacit agreement, however, she had decided that anyone who interfered while a treasure chest ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was being opened did ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠not count as a person. A so-called universal rule. And an outfit that was as good as naked was barbaric past all bearing.

"I do not exchange words with beasts."

Lupin, speaking with stern, solemn, dead-serious gravity, had become a person only yesterday.