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“Yes.”
“Oda…” After pausing for a moment, he continued. “Has anyone ever told you to speak up more?”
How did he know?
“Yes, many times.”
I looked to one of the guards behind the boss for an explanation. However, the motionless, poker-faced guard averted his gaze ever so slightly.
“At any rate, you just got here. You did not see a thing. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” I nodded in agreement. Besides, it was technically true, anyway. “I only just arrived. Thank you for taking a break from undressing a young girl and chasing her around the room to meet with me. So what was it you needed me for?”
The boss pinched his brows together for a few moments to think before nodding as if he had made up his mind.
“Dazai once said to me, ‘Odasaku has no ulterior motives; what you see is what you get. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, it’s like a balm for the soul.’ I kind of see what he means now.”
That was the first I’d ever heard of such a thing. This was Dazai, though; he was probably just talking out of his ass. A man in his twenties isn’t going to be much of a balm for anyone’s soul.
After giving a cough to clear the air a little, the boss continued, “Now, you must be wondering why I called you here.”
He picked up the silver cigar case on his desk and stared at it for a while before taking out a cigar. However, he didn’t smoke it; he merely played with it in his hand, then whispered, “I want you to find someone for me.”
“Find someone…?”
I ruminated on what he’d just said. It was fortunate that he didn’t tell me to just die, but it was still too early to relax.
“Please allow me to confirm a few points. Seeing as you’re giving me direct orders face-to-face, I’m guessing the person you wish to find is no ordinary individual. Are you sure a lowly grunt such as myself can handle it?”
“A valid question.” The boss gave a faint smirk. “Normally, a man of your rank would either be on the front line acting as a meat shield or rushing into a military police station with a bomb. But I’ve heard about the work you do, and I would like to entrust this task to you specifically.” The boss put the cigar back in the case, then swept his long bangs back. “Our intelligence officer Ango Sakaguchi has gone missing.”
If someone were to peer inside my mind at that moment, they would’ve witnessed something akin to a massive volcanic eruption. Countless question marks would have been blasting out of the crater, blanketing the sky in its entirety. And yet, the only visible reaction I had was a twitch of a finger.
“You’re able to keep calm, I see. I was going to say you wouldn’t be right for the job if you got upset, but…you passed. Allow me to continue. Ango disappeared last night. Apparently, he never made it back home. It is still unclear if he went into hiding of his own free will, or if he was kidnapped.”
So that would mean Ango went missing after we met up at the bar the night before. At the very least, there was nothing particularly different about him then. He even said he was going home before he left. Either Dazai or I would’ve noticed if he had been lying. I’m sure of it.
“As you well know, Ango is the Mafia’s informant.”
The boss heaved a dreary sigh. From his expression, he actually appeared genuinely worried about his subordinate’s safety.
“His head is chock-full of top-secret info on the Mafia: management of our secret accounts, lists of companies and government officials who pay us, contact information of clients who trade in smuggled goods. This information would make someone a fortune if sold to another syndicate, and they could cut us down and set us on fire before we knew it. Even if that isn’t the case, Ango is a talented and important subordinate to me. If something happened to him, then I want to help him. You understand how I feel, yes?”
I couldn’t say that I did. A lowly grunt would never be able to understand the thoughts of a man who manages an entire underground organization.
“Of course.”
Still, I offered a couple of words like a garnish on a dinner plate.
The boss took the quill on his desk and began spinning it around his fingers.
“I hear you specialize in troublesome matters such as this. The Mafia is full of people who are only good at shooting, punching, and making threats. Someone like you is a highly valuable asset to the organization. I’m expecting great things from you.”
The boss’s misunderstanding became clear to me: I was not a missing-persons recovery specialist, but an apprentice, an errand boy. While it was true that those were the kinds of jobs that usually came my way, for the most part it was only because I couldn’t “shoot, punch, or threaten” people.
Seemingly in a good mood, the boss opened his desk drawer and took out some silver leaf–inlaid Echizen paper. His quill pen glided across the paper’s surface as he wrote.
Sakunosuke Oda
