Later on, I'll rember this day
"And so theeen, I was still little, so I got really nervous when I swallowed the waterlon seed. I thought it might sprout in my stomach, and then what would I do?"
After we'd returned from the pub, Siesta's face was so red that her original skin tone was completely lost. She was sitting on the bed with her legs splayed out in an M-shape, bouncing up and down, even though she'd been injured just the other day. She was wearing a bathrobe, just like I was, and every ti she bounced, certain other parts bounced dramatically, too.
...Or maybe they only seed to because my head wasn't really working, either.
I didn't know. I couldn't seem to figure it out. After all, I was drunk, too.
I was pretty sure that, at that restaurant with its view of the city lights, we'd promised "Just one more drink," then promised again... About ten tis, I think. For the last one, we might have pinky-sworn, linked our arms, and drained our glasses. Urgh, I can't rember...
"Assistant? Are you listening to ?"
"Yeah, I'm listening. You were talking about whether a waterlon was a vegetable or a fruit, right?"
"Mm-hmm. I asked for a lon, but then they brought a lemon. I had no idea what was going on."
Desperately forcing my sluggish brain to function, I sat in a chair facing Siesta, nodding along with her story.
Our conversation had been barely functional for a while now, and I kinda suspected she'd been telling an extrely tedious story, but there was just no way Siesta—flawless, calm, cool, and collected Siesta, the greatest ace detective in history—would dribble on about anything pointless.
Probably just too high-minded for , I thought, so I kept my eyes locked
on hers and listened carefully. Siesta's eyes drooped in a liquid, lting way, and there wasn't a trace of her usual cool image to be seen.
"Say, why have you been so far away all this ti?" Siesta pouted sulkily, and I felt as if I was doing sothing bad sohow. "Co over here."
"...Into bed?"
"Yes. Let's talk over here together, okay?" I...wasn't sure about that idea.
A young man and woman, getting into bed together... Couldn't that, um, be a problem? In multiple ways?
I tried to harness what little solid thoughts and reason I had left, but— "Is it not okay?" she asked.
"Nah, it's fine."
If that was the answer my brain had coughed up, then that was the answer I'd give. Obeying the results of my thought experint, I slipped into the bed Siesta was sitting on.
...Did I actually need to get into bed? The thought crossed my mind, and then it promptly vanished.
"Heh-heh. This is the first ti we've slept together like this, isn't it?"
Then Siesta got under the covers beside , and there we were. In the sa bed, under the sa blankets.
"You're right here, Kimi. So close." Siesta rolled onto her side, gazing at .
The lights in the room were dim, but I could make out her face clearly. "If I went two days without seeing you, I really would forget your face." "So that doesn't change even when you're drunk, huh?"
"Heh-heh. Well, picking on you is fun, Kimi." "There she is, the young sadist."
"The truth is that you like it when I pick on you, though." "Don't make up weird motivations for !"
"Then would you rather I never teased you again, as long as we live?" "..."
"Should I just not talk to you?" "..."
"You really are funny, Kimi." "...Shove it."
"That crabby face is kinda cute."
"That's not a complint!"
"Well, I'll forget it in two days, though."
"So now we're back to that?!" I rolled over toward Siesta. "But..."
What I saw was her profile; she was gazing at the ceiling. "I'll never forget these three years I spent with you."
I don't think I'll ever forget the bravery on her face as long as I live. "Heh-heh. Whoops, I got a little serious, there."
However, Siesta promptly reverted to her blind drunk expression and rolled over toward .
"If they took seriousness away from you, what would you have left?" I asked.
I'd missed my chance to revert to my forr position, and Siesta and I ended up lying there face-to-face.
"That's so an. Just what do you think I am anyway?"
Logic incarnate? The cerebral ace detective or sothing? Was that what I should say?
"Why don't we..."
Smoothly, Siesta closed the distance between us.
Just a few more centiters and our noses—and possibly our lips—would touch. Our bodies were already almost pressed together, and from the swell of Siesta's ample bosom, I could hear the sound of her leaping heart.
"...do sothing silly for a change?" My whole body grew hot.
Co to think of it, we'd discussed her three great drives at one point.
"Siesta, I'm..." The next thing I knew, I was leaning over Siesta. "...Assistant." Siesta shut her eyes, tightly.
Making up my mind, I brought my face, my lips, closer to her, closer—
Most late-night monts of weakness make you
want to die in the morning
"Phew, soone kill , please."
When I woke up the next morning, after a minute or so of attempting to think, that was the first comnt that ca to mind.
First things first—my head hurt like a bitch; last night's alcohol was definitely still in my system. And that headache was figurative and literal, thanks to the ace detective fast asleep next to , breathing peacefully.
I'd heard that when you drank enough liquor to fill a bathtub, you forgot everything by the next morning...but unfortunately, my cerebral cortex rembered yesterday's sorry display with devastating clarity.
"Uu, ghk, kill noooow..."
My first-ever drinking binge had combined with the late-night mood to create a mortifying exchange. What the hell had I been thinking yesterday?
What had made get into bed with Siesta? And after that... "Bluuurgh."
Various emotions and the contents of my stomach forced their way up in a wave of nausea. Clapping a hand over my mouth, I started to get out of bed, and just then—
"..."
Siesta's eyes opened, and we made eye contact. We gazed at each other, blinking, for a mont that seed to stretch on forever.
"...Good morning." "..."
I greeted her tentatively, but there was no response.
Instead, Siesta ducked under the covers, checking on sothing. Then she poked her head out again. Her expression was unreadable. That part was fairly normal...but for so reason, I could nearly sense sothing like nace in it.
"Good morning," Siesta answered after an eternity. Firmly securing her bathrobe around her, she took a small silver attaché case out of the suitcase she always used.
I couldn't see exactly what she was doing, since she was facing away, but I assud she was taking sothing out of the case. Just as I thought that, Siesta turned back to .
"Assistant, I want you to hold out your arm."
"Maybe after you put the huge needle away!"
Siesta was holding a syringe in her right hand; there was liquid leaking out of its tip. "It's fine. It'll only hurt for a second."
"Hell no! When I said I wanted to die, I wasn't being serious!"
"It won't kill you. This injection temporarily erases human mories, that's all."
"You're kidding, right?! Is that another one of your special Seven Tools?!" "No, it's not. Co on, don't you rember? At the cultural festival, where we caught the Miss Hanakos. This has just a little of the sa
ingredient that was in that drug mixed into it."
Th-this couldn't be worse... That stuff's guaranteed to work...
"It's fine. I've run so experints and made an improved version that won't damage your health."
"Wait just a minute, did you run those on ?! I thought I'd been more forgetful than usual lately; was that why?!"
If it was, this was no joke. Still in my bathrobe, I tried to bolt out of the apartnt, but—
"I won't let you get away."
"Ghk, hah." Siesta leaped onto my back, straddling and pinning to the floor.
"Now put out your arm. You're going to forget everything about yesterday... About yesterday."
I was no match for a ticked-off Siesta, and the syringe bore down on my right arm—
Ding-dong. At the very last second, the doorbell rang, announcing a visitor. "...Sobody's here."
"..."
"You're sure you don't need to get that?" "Tch!"
"Don't tsk at ; just...don't." It's totally out of character for you.
Getting off reluctantly, Siesta headed for the door. "Yes?"
When she opened it, standing on the other side was... "It was really noisy in here. What were you doing?"
...Alicia, the proxy detective.
"Well, not like I care." She put her hands on her hips and declared, "Mission accomplished."
Alicia surveyed us triumphantly. She was holding a small bag.
Mission accomplished? She couldn't actually have found the sapphire eye after that, could she?
Had Alicia—our Alicia—managed to find what Siesta had nearly given up on?
"Here."
Alicia held the bag out to . Inside was— "An eye patch?"
It was a perfectly ordinary black eye patch, sothing that made no sense in the context of the conversation.
"The eye that's actually important is that one, isn't it?" Alicia boldly declared, pointing at my left eye. "Unless you wear an eye patch like you're supposed to, it won't heal up."
Standing on tiptoe, Alicia tied the eye patch on. "...So you noticed, huh?"
"Well, we were together for two whole weeks."
I hadn't intentionally been hiding it from Alicia, but my left eye had been wounded in that fight with Hel. As far as day-to-day life was concerned, it wasn't much of a problem, but my visual impairnt had caused to lose track of Alicia in town several tis.
"That phantom eye may not even exist—instead of relying on it, you should take good care of the one that's already here."
Apparently, I'd misread Alicia a bit as a person. The girl who openly expressed all her emotions was probably just the surface. Her true nature was bound to be—
"That's my answer." Alicia glanced at Siesta. "Is it the right one?"
Was that what it had been? Had this been the problem Siesta had set for Alicia all along? Had she wanted to see what sort of answer the girl would co up with, when given the impossible task of finding sothing that didn't exist? After a short silence, Princess Kaguya of the Bamboo gave her long-awaited answer.
"J-just as I'd planned."
Siesta's gaze was wandering so dramatically it beggared belief. "No, seriously, how bad at lying are you?"
Even if it was only for a mont, the proxy had outmatched the ace.
The turning point for everything
"I'm not terribly good at being clever in the mont."
Siesta was walking beside , her expression unusually bitter.
After the episode that morning, Siesta had accompanied to the supermarket to do so shopping now that her legs were fully healed.
"I haven't seen you like that in a long ti," I comnted.
The ace detective seed to be a perfect superhuman, but she had a surprising number of weak points.
"...Shut up."
It was unusual for her to be this cranky, too. It wasn't bad to flip the power dynamic once in a while, was it?
"Do you like your present from a girl that much?" Siesta shot a cold glance at the eye patch over my left eye.
But before I could make so kind of objection—
"...No, sorry. That's not what I ant." Siesta's shoulders hunched just a little, and there was less confidence in her voice than usual. "I'm just embarrassed that I wasn't as attentive about your eye."
"Is that right?"
For a mont, I wasn't sure what to say.
"Well, you know. You're human, too, I guess." I chose sothing totally obvious. "I'm glad you're human enough to get yanked around by petty emotions like that."
"...Really."
She smiled faintly, then nodded quietly two or three tis.
After that, we walked on for a while, and then Siesta abruptly stopped. She was studying the sign for an underground live music venue. There was a poster for a perforr pasted to the wall nearby—and although it didn't give their na, it advertised an upcoming guest from Japan.
"Siesta?"
"...It's nothing." Siesta shook her head and started walking again. "Not yet."
"...?"
Just as I was about to ask her what she ant, my cell phone vibrated in my pocket. According to the screen, it was an international call. Wondering what was up, I hit the TALK button and heard a very familiar voice.
"Hey, you damn brat. It looks like you managed to survive sohow."
She talked like a middle-aged man, which was probably why guys tended to avoid such an attractive woman. Telling her so was guaranteed to get drawn and quartered, though.
"That's what you should have said when we ran into each other earlier, Ms.
Fuubi."
Plus, Siesta and I both sustained major injuries because of that Jack the Ripper case you brought us. Earlier, when you randomly appeared in our apartnt, you didn't ntion that at all.
As I thought back, it struck as incredibly unfair, and I was planning to continue with a complaint or three, when—
"Huh? When did we run into each other?"
The voice from the phone wasn't teasing. She sounded genuinely bewildered.
"Co on, what are you talking about? It was two weeks ago. You dropped in unannounced and told us sothing about a sapphire eye, rember?"
"Huh? I only visited you once, to discuss the Jack the Ripper incident with you. You confuse with sobody?"
I broke out in goose bumps all over.
"I just heard that you two had a hell of a fight after that; this is the first ti I've called."
Whoa, wait, you're kidding . What was that, then? Two weeks ago, when we'd t Ms. Fuubi, or the individual who looked like her, for the second ti— No, that's right. Co to think of it, there was sothing weird. When she'd shown up then, she'd had her Zippo lighter, even though she'd given it to earlier.
"Hello? Kimizuka? Hellooooo?"
The voice on the other end of the phone seed to be getting farther and farther away.
My unpleasant hunch changed to certainty crawling all through . "Assistant."
Siesta must have figured out what this conversation was about already. She nodded quietly, her expression grim.
The Ms. Fuubi we'd t in London that second ti had been a fake.
There was only one being who could pull off that trick: Cerberus, the shape-shifter.
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