Chapter 54
"Why are you here?" Kirigiri asked her grandfather. She had to take a moment because she had never aimed this tone at him before. This tone had once only been for her father.
"You were submitted for an involuntary psychiatric evaluation." Fuhito glanced at Jin. "As your family, I was notified immediately."
Jin bristled.
"Once again, I will ask what you are doing here," Fuhito said to Jin. "My understanding was that only immediate family should be notified."
"Don't play this game with me," Jin said.
"I understand." Fuhito smiled pleasantly. "It must be a mistake in her file. I will be sure to correct it as soon as possible."
". . . Is that a threat?" Kirigiri asked. She stared at the floor, not sure whether to care about his answer.
"Of course not," Fuhito said. "But a man who abandoned his daughter shouldn't be considered family."
She glared at him. "What about a man who was blackmailed into running away?"
Fuhito stared at her for a long moment. Then he looked at Jin.
"You said not to look for her," Jin said through a tight jaw. "I didn't. She. . ."
"Came looking for you. Yes, I know," Fuhito said with a dismissive turn of his body. "That loophole is the reason you're alive."
"You're admitting to it," Kirigiri said. "Are you confessing that his side of the story is true?"
Fuhito sighed and leaned back against a wall. "You know how people are, Kyoko. His side of the story will be full of bias. However, I imagine the general picture was accurate."
"You actually did it." Something hot like tears poked at her eyes. Fuhito didn't react, didn't even look at her. Jin did, however, and whatever he saw made him go cold.
"You ruined us," Jin growled. "You separated a child from her father right after she had lost her mother. You were going to murder me if you couldn't take her for yourself. How can you stand there and call yourself her family?"
"I did what needed to be done," Fuhito said. "The world isn't made of easy choices."
"Was selling me to the Deep Ones an easy choice?" Kirigiri asked.
His lips drew away from his teeth in his rage, like a growling animal. "I saved you! I saved you from the same horrible choice your father made."
"And what choice was that?" Jin shouted. "Choosing whether she wanted to have a father?"
Fuhito looked Jin squarely in the face. "I drove you away. I gave you the chance to live."
"You sold your own granddaughter into slavery!" Kirigiri cried. "You let them control her. . . They mutilated her to threaten her father!"
"Kyoko, what are you talking about?" Jin asked, pale with horror.
"I've saved you," Fuhito repeated. "You will not be left behind. You will share in the fortunes of the Kirigiri line."
She squeezed the bedpost next to her, needing the pressure. "Great-grandfather was obsessed with our line, too. You can't be the first. How far back does this go?"
". . . Kyoko, how many great detectives do you know?" Fuhito asked.
She frowned. Likewise, Jin watched his father with confusion. Kirigiri said, "Plenty. Fujisaki-kun was very good at what he did. Togami-kun, before he became my boss, had a knack for deductions. Then there's Saihara-kun and his uncle and . . ."
"Not great detectives, Great Detectives," Fuhito interrupted. "A detective who works alone or with a sidekick, who has no need for backup and always finds the culprit."
Kirigiri would have chosen herself as a first answer, followed by her grandfather. She knew no one else. Naegi needed her, and Saihara was good but she knew he received substantial help from others like his department's profiler, Ouma Koichi.
Fuhito said, "There are none. Not anymore, barring the Kirigiris. However, it isn't that the world's pool of talent has gotten smaller; the world's simply gotten too complex. We have computers now, chemical analysis, international crime and dozens and dozens of cases every year. It's too much. The cases have become more and more complicated, and the standard of proof rises every decade. It is no longer possible to be a Great Detective and yet, the Kirigiris have been generation after generation."
She said, "You're saying . . . this isn't natural."
Fuhito nodded. "The first true Kirigiri struck a deal for prosperity, protection and of course, salvation. The descendants who accepted the contract shared in those promises. In return, we became detectives to erase inconvenient evidence and silence those who knew too much. Those great Kirigiri instincts, the ones that separate us from the rest? They don't exist. No doubt some of your miraculous deductions were drawn from your own logic and experience, but the truly impossible ones were simply his voice whispering into our ears."
"My . . ." She collapsed onto the bed. Her talent, her life, a lie? "My talent comes from them?"
"The day you came to me and said you wanted to be the greatest detective ever . . . That was your acceptance of the contract. But you." Fuhito glared at his son. "You never wanted to be a detective. I could never make you say those words and mean it. You rejected that destiny. And so, Komaeda Nagito had no use for you."
She felt faint. "Komaeda Nagito?"
"Yes. He is the one the first Kirigiri made the contract with."
This must be a dream. She had known she was beholden to something, but to Komaeda? To the same monster that had murdered Naegi's father and driven them apart? Impossible. She couldn't be. It wasn't fair!
She clutched at her neck where the rosary used to be. If Fuhito was telling the truth and Yonaga had been telling the truth, then that meant . . . It hadn't been the Elders possessing her . . . It had been Komaeda. It had been Komaeda -!
. . . What had happened? She sat up slowly, the world spinning. From what Jin and Fuhito were saying, she had passed out from shock.
"Don't touch me!" She slapped Fuhito's hand away. A moment afterwards, she realized Jin was holding her other arm. She chose to ignore it. "Don't speak to me. Just leave!"
"I came to tell you that your work is done, and you can rest easy," Fuhito said. He looked around the small room. "I imagine you'll get plenty of time for rest here."
"My work is done? What did I even do?" she shouted at him. "I never tried to help them. I don't know what I've done for them. I don't understand anything! I don't even know why this happened or why Nanami Chiaki died."
"That girl? What does she have to do with any of this?" Fuhito asked, eyebrows raised.
"She was the victim. She's the reason all of this started."
Fuhito said. "You haven't figured out the reason she died yet?"
". . .No. But you did." Somehow, through that maelstrom of pain and betrayal, she said that with conviction.
"Of course. She died because they needed to commit a murder."
She blinked. "What?"
"How else would you get the homicide detectives to walk into your home?" Fuhito said. "They needed a murder, and Nanami Chiaki arrived at the right time. I'm afraid there is no grander scheme."
"The murder was meaningless?" Jin said slowly.
"Not meaningless," Fuhito said. "It set the stage. The choice of victim, however, was arbitrary."
"That can't be," she said. "They had a map of her town. They . . ."
But that didn't have to be about Nanami, did it? For Hinata Hajime had also lived in that town.
She felt like she was going to faint again. This was so much worse than her original theory: that Nanami Chiaki, after meeting with or being intercepted by Tanaka, had gone to face Hope's Peak alone. Kirigiri had assumed it had something to do with Kamukura Izuru, aka. Hinata Hajime, in a tragedy born of friendship or love. But Fuhito said differently, claimed that even with Nanami's intimate knowledge of one of their members and her reasons to hate the church, Hope's Peak still hadn't viewed her as a threat. Nanami's death. . . it had simply been bad luck.
But at least the motive was clear now. If Fuhito was correct, then the aim had been to attract the attention of the police, of Naegi and her. Except she was here, locked in this hospital ward with her villainous grandfather trying to convince her to back down. There was only one conclusion to draw: she didn't matter. Hope's Peak had no use for her. The motive behind this plot wasn't to lure them in. The motive, simply put, had been to produce bait to catch Naegi.
"How do I know you're correct?" she asked.
"Because they told me," Fuhito said. "They brought me to the scene to make sure they had set it up correctly – they have a different definition of murder – and they hadn't left any obvious clues behind."
She remembered faintly that Ikusaba had spoken of a car dropping people off at the church the morning of the murder. Had that been her grandfather?
"You didn't even try to warn me," Kirigiri said. "When I decided to become a detective, I had no idea what it actually meant."
"It was paramount that you knew nothing of the reality," Fuhito said. "I cannot say why, other then Komaeda-kun insisted."
"Then tell me this: what do they want with Makoto?"
"I don't know."
"If you do not have that information, then I have no further use for you." She brushed her hair behind her ear as some old fire returned to her. "There will be no further contact between us. You will not see me. You will not speak to me. You can return to the life you clearly desire: as their fervent slave."
How the tides had changed. Fuhito did not break down begging as his son had those years ago, but something like pain showed for a bit. But like her, Fuhito was in control of himself and it didn't last long. He said, "So be it. It will all end in a matter of days, regardless. I'm sure you'll understand then, Kyoko."
With that, another chapter of her life closed. (Another person she loved left her behind.) Now, it was time to turn her attention to the path before her, to the only thing she had left.
"Please," she said to her father, "you need to get me out of here. You heard him: whatever Hope's Peak is planning, they're close to achieving it and they need Makoto. Help me. Please."
Jin looked away. "What would you do? I don't think you can stop them."
"I need to try. We both know that whatever they're planning is evil," she said. "You'll regret not trying."
"I can't promise anything," Jin said, "but I'll see what I can do. Just . . . make sure you know what you're doing."
She dismissed him. Meant to, at least. But just as one of his feet stepped out of the room, she stopped him.
". . . Thank you," she said.
In all honestly, she thought Jin had lied to her. When he left and rescue didn't come within the next day, she wrote him off. It was instinct from years of dismissing her father. Even though she knew the truth behind his abandonment of her, she still had no ability to have faith in him. She spent her time alternatively scheming or fantasizing about taking down Hope's Peak.
When rescue did come, she was not to blame for not recognizing it. Jin hadn't said anything about sending a stranger, after all. Yet one moment she was pacing her cell, and the next someone was knocking on the room's window and waving hello. It wasn't like an ordinary window either. It was one high up, higher than she could reach without something to stand on, for most of her room was underground.
The strange man had a blonde goatee and thin mustache that marked an otherwise smooth face. He waved at her again and just as cheerfully, smashed the glass with a hammer. She tensed, expecting alarms, but nothing happened.
"Hello, Kyoko-chan!" the man said. Who was he to address her so familiarly? "I hope you don't mind, but your daddy's a little busy right now."
"With what?" she asked out of a lack of anything else to say. Even if she had been close with her father, she would never ever, ever, ever, ever have called him daddy.
"With a distraction." Humming, he chipped away at the remaining toothlike shards before pulling out a screwdriver. "Now hang tight."
The man began working at the bolts holding the window bars in place. Kirigiri waited below impatiently, like a dog waiting for its owner to drop a treat.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Ah, the less you know, the less likely we are to get in trouble. They always expect people to break out instead of in, but let's try not to take chances," the man said. With a grin that seemed to glint in the sunlight, he said, "I'm a good friend of your dad. I think that's what you really wanted to know."
The last screw dropped to the floor. The man grabbed the bars just before they fell. He handed them down, so she could lower them without making a sound. His shoulders fit through the window, and the man extended his left hand to her. Between him pulling and climbing the wall with her legs, she slipped through the window and popped out onto the surface.
"Now, this is an adventure," the man said. He picked up a fedora that had been laying next to him and plopped it onto his head. "Jin said not to wait for him. No telling how long that distraction will last."
"What is he doing?" Kirigiri asked.
"Making a scene, as you young folks put it. I have a car out in front. I can take you anywhere. Just say the word."
"Take me home," Kirigiri said, already walking in the direction of his car.
"Are you sure?" the man asked. "That will be the first place they look for you."
"There are things that I need there. You can take me there."
Surprisingly, the man didn't try to change her mind, saying that she was the detective and knew best. He turned on a radio tuned to the frequency of the police scanner. For a while, they listened to the buzz of petty crimes around the city, something she found relaxing. Then, the hospital's name came up. After listening to the codes called in, she knew her escape had been discovered. Her father's friend stared at her through the mirror, so he must have known, too. However, he did not ask whether she wanted to change her destination.
"Anything else you need?" the man asked once he had dropped her off at home.
"No, this will be sufficient."
"Kyoko-chan. . ." His index finger tapped on the car's front door. "I know you have no reason to listen to an old man like myself, but take care of yourself. I've heard things are getting dangerous around here."
She nodded. "Tell him I will. And thank you."
The man nodded. He and his car sped off.
She grabbed a garbage can, somehow stood on it without breaking it, and then clambered onto the roof. She couldn't see Tanaka's nest, but she remembered where it was. At some point, she crossed the invisible barrier and his gear popped into view. She dropped to her knees in the middle of it, grabbing a duffle bag he had left behind. She filled the bag instead with anything potentially useful she could find, like plants and powders and a talisman with the symbol of the ouroboros.
She dropped from the roof. Hopefully, the neighbours wouldn't see her and call the police. Hopefully, Hope's Peak wouldn't get a warning. . .
"Kirigiri-chan!"
Fuck.
Oh, wait. It was Hagakure. Was he. . . was he picketing her house?! With a sign claiming the police were discriminating against him? As she absorbed that, her grip slackened and she nearly dropped the duffle bag.
"What are you doing?" she asked Hagakure.
Hagakure looked her way, and then raised his sign higher and chanted louder.
She grabbed his wrist. "Stop. What is it?"
"Kirigiri-chan!" Hagakure puffed himself up and she knew this was going to be good. "I demand to speak with Naegi-kun!"
"Why?" she asked cautiously. Part of her wanted to run away.
"Why? Because he promised." Hagakure lobbed an accusing finger at her. "The place next to my favourite burger joint just got a radiator so if it explodes, my burger joint explodes, too. I went to the police to complain cause Naegi-chan promised they would help me. But get this! They laughed at me, and then Naegi-kun refused to talk to me when I asked for him so I'm staying here until he does!"
She rubbed her brow. "Hagakure-kun, he didn't refuse to see you, he can't see you. He isn't around."
"Oh." Hagakure laughed and smiled sheepishly. "Whoops. Uh, you're not mad, right?"
At that moment, they heard sirens.
"Ack! You called the cops on me!" He began bouncing from foot to foot rapidly like a cartoon character.
"No," she said sharply. "They're here for me, not you."
As the first shivers of the flight-and-fight instinct ran up her spine, she truly saw Hagakure for the first time. He was an idiot, yes, and a scam artist. But the fact of the matter was that despite everything he had done and all the enemies he had made, no one had ever gotten him into a cell.
"You need to take me with you." She grabbed his wrist because he was about to bolt. "I need to hide from the police and you're my best bet."
"No way! There is a 30% chance this is a setup!" Despite the fact he was saying it was more likely she wasn't setting him up, he treated his statement like the opposite. "I mean why would they be after you, anyways?"
She sized him up.
"Because my boyfriend was abducted by a cult run by creatures that are pretending to be humans but could be aliens as part of a decades-long conspiracy where they've been manipulating me my entire life and now the police are trying to imprison me so I don't get in the way of their evil ritual." She said that all in one breath in a monotone.
"I knew the aliens were evil! Alright, Kirigiri-chan, don't worry. I got this . . . Ohshitthey'realreadyhere!"
Hagakure took off like a bullet. She, having glanced back at the approaching car, almost missed which way he went. She ran after him. Behind her, she thought something was calling her name into a bullhorn.
She could hear sirens on the streets all around them, but Hagakure had his escape routes and knew them well. She followed him through gardens and over fences, sometimes darting across roads right behind the police. Finally, they emerged into a wooded area that she had known about but never really explored. On the street nearby, a police car went screaming past, but it didn't stop.
"Don't worry, they never get me past here!" Hagakure said. "We're almost home-free."
Short on breath, she only nodded. They waited until the next car flew past, and then she followed her unlikely ally into the woods.
