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I let go of Dazai. I understand what he’s saying. Perhaps righteousness isn’t something you seek in others but something you search for inside yourself.
Even then…
Miss Sasaki is dead, and so is Rokuzo.
All I’ve found in my search for righteousness within myself is a sense of hopelessness.
“……”
I gaze out the abandoned hospital’s window. The crimson spider lilies sway in the decaying garden out front. Even if I close my eyes, the flowers are still there, burned on the back of my eyelids…along with a trace of her smile.
INTERLUDE II
Nightfall.
Tilted on its side, a police van burns on the street alongside the coast facing the Yokohama harbor. Two officers lie dead under the shaking car.
“W-wait! Wh-what does the M-Mafia want with me?!”
Two more figures are still alive. One is a young arms dealer. He was arrested and in the middle of being transported to a military police facility when he was attacked and injured.
“You really don’t know? How absurd.”
The only other living soul, approaching the young man, is a dark shadow cloaked in a wriggling overcoat—Akutagawa.
“You disrespected the Port Mafia. You purposely fed us information on that organ-trafficking cabdriver so that we would dispose of him for you. Every person who has ever deceived us for personal gain has paid the price, and this time will be no different.”
The young man falls on his rear as Akutagawa’s black boots get closer.
“N-nobody! Nobody can kill me! Die!”
Right as the young man lifts his arm into the air, a tattoo-like pattern appears on Akutagawa’s skin. The number is “21.” Then, as he swings his arm, he swiftly accelerates Akutagawa backward. However…
“What—?!”
Although Akutagawa was knocked back, he gently stops before slowly returning to where he had been standing, unfazed.
“Is that it?”
His overcoat transformed into countless black needles that pierced the ground, acting as a cushion to support his body and soften the impact.
The two-headed beast Rashomon arises from the overcoat and soars in the arms dealer’s direction. The young man tries to dodge, but he is too late, and the cloaked hound’s razor-sharp jaws tear him apart. He screams in agony until he is nothing more than a pile of meat. Akutagawa coldly continues to watch.
“Wow, there goes my appetite.”
He turns around to see a shadowy figure behind him.
Akutagawa immediately releases Rashomon’s dark blades. The blades, sharp enough to slice through metal, shoot toward the shadowy figure’s neck but are deflected by some invisible force the moment they connect. Rashomon’s fangs claimed only a few layers of skin before they were blocked by a skill.
“Hey, where are your manners? We’re business partners, are we not?”
“That still doesn’t change the fact that you used the Port Mafia for your own personal gain.”
A middle-aged Caucasian man wearing a black cap walks out from the shadows—the same American agent Dazai and Kunikida met at the embassy. The agent scratches his neck as he addresses Akutagawa casually.
“This is some sort of misunderstanding. I’m a client of yours, in a sense. You get the foreign trade route that young arms dealer once had, and we get to say we prevented an illegal exporter from our country from stirring up trouble in Japan. It’s a fair deal if you ask me. So could you quit acting like I stole from you?”
“Deceiving and instigating is common practice for agents. I am sure you have other reasons for getting involved.”
