Do You Think You Can Run After Reincarnating, Nii-san?

- Five years have passed since then.

I was dressed in a suit I had grown accustomed to, feeling the speed of time.

Suddenly, five years early after his childhood brothers and sisters disappeared...

After only five years, I was surprised at myself being used to the fact that the two of them weren't around.

... that was really sudden.

I was just bewildered, bewildered, bewildered... and while I was bewildered, everything was gone.

The parents of the Kōjo brothers and sisters died in a car accident.

Then, at the end of that funeral or not, almost at the same time, the brothers and sisters all disappeared somewhere.

My relatives took it from me.

But then you should have said something to me.

I hope you responded to my call about once.

If you're shocked that your parents are dead, all the more so.

... I hope you relied on your lover...?

Finally, it should have fit into the shape it should have.

Yet it was soon, taken away.

Is it fate?

Is it fate?

... or is it something else?

Undoubtedly, I got used to my life in college, got a job, graduated, and now got used to my job... so, as I ate up to my daily busyness, five years of months had passed.

I leave the apartment where I live alone to commute.

The amount of time you can keep in your thoughts is not that much.

Turn your foot to the station and switch your head to work mode, on the verge of...

The man appeared.

"... pharmacist, Mr. Asha Li..."

He was a fifty tangled, mature man.

I'm wearing a black suit, but the clothes, the person in question, have a strangely tedious impression - yet only my eyes shine like giraffes and beasts.

I didn't seem strange and suspicious, but that dangerous impression was enough to be vigilant.

But the next moment.

The vigilance turns to amazement when a man sees what he has made him try to take out of his suit's inner pocket.

"There's something I'd like to ask you about Kyoya Nojo and XX's siblings. Can you please give me some time after work? '

It opened up like an old cell phone, black - something I've only seen on TV drama.

It was a police notebook.

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For the first time since joining the company, I applied for a salary.

My company seems a lot white around me saying it suddenly came through that morning.

Kawagoe, my name is

That's what the man in the suit named himself as he sat in the opposite seat of the coffee shop.

"For once, I'm with the Criminal Division of the Police Department. It's a nasal knob... '

Laughing to mock himself, Detective Kawagoe ordered coffee from the waitress.

I order tea.

"Quick, but let's get down to business"

I didn't even wait for the items I ordered to come, says Detective Kawagoe.

"Mr. Pharmacist. You're a childhood friend of the Kōjo brothers and sisters. Is there a difference in this regard '

'... Yes. When I was seven, I moved next to the apartment...'

"And my brothers and sisters broke up five years ago.... and then what's happening to the two of you?

'... no...'

I shake my head without strength.

'I don't know. Over the past five years, I've tried to get in touch many times. But somehow I didn't get caught...'

"I guess."

I raised my face to the hammer struck with a dry voice.

"Mr. Pharmacist. First, calm down and listen.... The Kōjo brothers and sisters have been missing for five years. '

'... what...?

'I don't even know where you are, if you're alive or dead. It's even a very recent story that turns out to be missing'

Missing, unknown -?

I don't even know if those two are alive or dead?

'... there's no reason to be confused. Let me explain it slowly.'

The waitress brought coffee and tea.

I didn't feel very comfortable drinking, but Detective Kawagoe recommended me, and I put my mouth on the tea.

... warmth swept through my body, a little, but I also calmed down in my head.

"I am."

Detective Kawagoe put Kacha and the coffee cup on the saucer and started talking.

For one reason or another, I'm looking for my siblings. This is extremely personal and the police as an organization have nothing to do with it. It's actually an abuse of authority to be seeing you in the name of a detective right now. "

Ironically distorted lips, the detective continues.

'Still, I have a lot of know-how. There is also a connection. But even mobilizing them, I can't grasp where my brothers and sisters are and what's happening now...'

'There is such a thing... there is...?

"In modern Japan, all public information is managed on data. I can't originally refer to that for a personal investigation, but a little peek at the risk meant that my siblings were now supposed to live in a province with relatives. But - when I actually took a leg, there was no one at the registered address. It's a shell. '

I am breathtaking.

Then it's as if you two were deliberately...

'There was no sign of him being kidnapped. I disappeared myself - or I just have to assume that I wasn't there from the beginning. So I followed in the footsteps of the two of us. The Advanced Information Society, right now, if you move somewhere, it's bound to leave a footprint on the data.... but "

'There were no footprints...?

'No, the other way around. There was too much (...)'

Yes... Too much?

"There was some information that I went to Hokkaido and some information that I went to Okinawa. This is, in fact, a basic M.O. for disappearance - so if you're going to have any information left anyway, you just have to hide it in more information. If you're hiding a tree, you've always said it's in the woods."

Basic disappearance modus operandi.

I mean, those two, they darkened themselves, you know...?

'The information disturbance in this hand was omnidirectional. There are countless SNS accounts on the net that seem to belong to both of us. Some posts I don't think are good enough to be eyewitnesses to the two of us. If you swallow all of that, there will be more than 600 brothers and sisters from around the world.'

"Roppiku......!?

'Yeah. Most, or all, of it is false information that prevents us from getting to real information. There is no other way to break through the smokescreen of this information than to move the police in an organized manner. But...... the police are not free enough to be blamed on people who haven't even filed a search. There.'

Detective Kawagoe's eyes glistened slightly, and he looked at me.

"I came to talk to you with the thought of straw, so - Mr. Shouyasha Li."

I am breathtaking.

Those eyes.

The brilliance.

Unusual, I thought.

Bottomless marshy obsession - or hatred.

Wrong is not the outrage of being a police officer, etc.

I perceived with his eyes alone that he was moving with complete personal grievances.

'Why...?

And I will spit upon my throat, which is dry.

"How could you get that far... those two, where are they?

The shadow falls on Detective Kawagoe's expression.

... Can't you talk to me?

There's no way I'm going to tell you about my personal circumstances.

I thought so.

'... you should talk about it.'

Hiding his gloomy emotions behind his withered voice, Detective Kawagoe put his fingers together loosely at the table.

'Actually... there's been a lot of strange disappearances over the last five years'

…… That's not about brothers and sisters?

"Yeah. Well, the missing people leave anywhere all year round - if you look at this list, don't you have something to pin on, too?"

When Detective Kawagoe took his notebook out of his suit, he opened a page and gave it to me.

There were a number of names in unexpectedly trivial letters, as well as age, gender and occupation noted.

What we have in common...... to stress, that there are many women and that they are biased towards younger people in their late teens and early twenties - no?

'... what...?

I leaked my tempting voice and looked back over and over again at the list of names.

It's not a mistake...

I know more than half of the names on this list.

"Names on that list, all of them"

Detective Kawagoe said.

"In the last five years, you won't know where you are."

'- Ew!!

It was the best I could do because it screamed.

Thoughts don't turn.

Yet only the facts are strictly engraved on the head.

This.

All of it.

I know Ki-kun.

Friends to just classmates, fellow clubs and managers, juniors to seniors, people who lived in the same apartment.

Regardless of the depth of the relationship, it was all a human being who had been somewhat involved in Kyoya Nobushi.

Someone involved with Ki-kun - in just five years, he's disappearing so much?

I didn't feel like counting very much, but even if I look at it, I'm over twenty.

This... This can't normally happen...!

"- Ah."

One name came to my attention as I looked stunnedly at the list of names.

- Kawagoe Mina.

That's for sure, I think Ki-kun was the manager of the club that was in high school.

He's a cute kid with a pleasant vibe who feels like a manager in the athletics department...

... Kawagoe (...)...?

When I looked up, Detective Kawagoe (...) laid his eyes down the other way.

'... my daughter, too, disappeared. Four years ago now - I've only been contacted about "running away from home," and that's exactly it. "

Four years ago - when the Kōjo brothers and sisters were gone from before me, less than a year later.

'Of course, I filed a search application. Mr. Pharmacist...... I just said, "Missing people leave anywhere all year round," but the truth is, many of them are just runaways. Parents file a search application worrying about their child's running away from home. That's all. In it, my daughter was buried...'

Detective Kawagoe speaks with a pale voice in the void.

"I'm a detective. I'm a police agent. If I tell you, it's a flower shape among the police.... because I couldn't find one of my own daughters. I couldn't find it, not for four years...

It was like drowning in the ocean at night, not knowing up or down. I can't see anything, but I'm swinging my hands and feet, swinging, swinging - finally, I got there. Kōjo brothers and sisters...... to these two '

... No way.

No way, this guy... take those two?

'Do you think it's irrelevant, pharmacist? Kyoya Nobushiro's officials have disappeared so many times in just five years. I haven't found all of them. I don't even know life or death. And then Kyoya Nobujo and his sister are gone. "

"Ki, Ki-kun - Kyoya-kun even kidnapped you!?

"Kidnapping? That's impossible."

Detective Kawagoe ironically distorted his lips.

"It's impossible to keep so many people alive for five years. This is murder (...) '

It was a cold voice.

With a voice that lost temperature like a corpse - he affirmed the death of his own daughter.

'... there were countless things I regretted being a cop, but this is the biggest. Just because you have a good knowledge, you can't escape reality.'

"... Ki-kun... Murder..."

"Yeah, sure, I don't think so either."

'What?'

When I looked up, Detective Kawagoe was searching through the inner pockets of his suit.

But stop doing that in the way I remember so much.

... Usually, maybe he's a smoker.

You cared for me?

"I think so."

Put your mouth on the coffee instead, says Detective Kawagoe.

"Let's say someone kidnapped the missing persons, including my daughter. But - Mr. Medicine Guard, the killer has set an exception for you and dared to miss it '

'What...? Me?'

'Naturally. If the killer is after Kyoya Nobushi's associates, you're in charge. I'm familiar with him... and he was a lover, wasn't he?'

"... it was just, like, a few days"

I seep through the bitter laughter of self-derision.

After that confession, I could barely talk to Ki-kun.

In the end, Ki-kun disappeared without even one of his dates.

Detective Kawagoe must have looked it up from that muscle because he had leaked what was confessed to some people.

"Officials of Kyoya Nojo - If this is what the victims have in common, I can't explain that you're still safe five years later. The killer has missed it. I just have to think so.

Now, I admit that I'm almost paranoid, overlapping assumptions with assumptions - and I think I can explain them in one hypothesis. '

"... hypothesis...?

"It's a statue of the killer."

Tips Tips, and Detective Kawagoe slaps his desk with his finger. As if to calm yourself down.

"The culprit can grasp Kyoya Nobushi's friendship by wearing thin clothes. And someone who may remember you well enough to exceptionally miss you - '

in me.

A certain figure tied the statue.

'- Isn't that just one?

I couldn't say anything to Detective Kawagoe's penetrating gaze.

I want to deny it.

I want to scream that's not true.

But... from my mouth, no words come forth...

'Can you tell me, pharmacist - was there anything wrong with your brothers and sisters in Kōjo? Any minor matter......!

Detective Kawagoe said to me for the first time with heat in his words.

At that time, I remembered floating behind my brain.

That's... right.

Sure, in middle school - when Ki-kun had a girlfriend.

I saw it then... on my smartphone screen...

"... Kawagoe,"

I groan as I squeeze out with my dry throat from my heels...

'Just one thing, tell me...... If this is a case... and if it brightens up to the public - that she's caught'

"Yes."

"What happens to her?"

Detective Kawagoe shut up a little and touched the notebook he left on the table.

'... pharmacist. There are over twenty names on this list of notebooks, no matter how you look at them.'

"Yes......"

"The number of victims of mass murder, now known as the worst in Japan's post-war crime history, is nineteen."

I only perceived what he was going to say, but he went on to the end.

"If this incident brightens up, the title of (...) After the War (...) Offender (...) Sin (...) History (...) Above (...) Greatest (...) Evil (...) Killing (...) Person (...) Case (...) will be given to this case and its culprit"

Maximize, suck.

There is no greater sin, and no worse deed.

That is, extreme sentencing.

'... so'

I don't know why I asked you this.

But I felt I had to ask.

'So... to that extent (...), the sin of atonement... what is it...?

Detective Kawagoe stiffens his expression.

I didn't even think about it, it was a face.

... He's a police officer, so maybe he even stained his bone marrow.

Criminals catch.

And make him pay for his sins.

But.

If there was a sin that could not be redeemed to the extent of punishment - what should we do?

'.................. I don't know'

After a slightly longer silence, Detective Kawagoe shook his head loosely.

"It's, I'm sure... God, Buddha. I expect that kind of thing will do something about it"

… I have also decided to do so.

This problem was just beyond the realm of man.

So I told Detective Kawagoe what I remembered.

Even so, it's a really trivial story.

Back in middle school, when Ki-kun had just had a girlfriend.

I used to see her smartphone screen for a moment when she reported that to XX.

That's when it was on the screen.

'- Now I think it was Ki-kun's girlfriend SNS. She was an extreme sibling, so I take it for granted that you care about her that she could have been your brother. But... on second thought...'

How did you know that?

Ki-kun never mentioned what she could have done.

Even I have never known her before.

How did XX know Ki-kun had a girlfriend?

How did XX find Ki-kun's SNS?

And why...

You know, he was looking at the smartphone with his eyes as cold as ice.

".................. right"

Listening to me, Detective Kawagoe shrugged.

'Right, right, right - it was a simple thing. Ha... When you peek into the abyss, the abyss is also... "

I couldn't ask what it meant.

Detective Kawagoe took his seat in a hurry before that.

"Um!"

Thank you, I will also stand up and say to him, who will tell him quickly to leave.

'Please, find them, take those two. From me too... please'

Kawagoe loosened the prominent cheeks of the wrinkles.

"Yeah. If I find it, I'll tell you first."

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And then a few months later...

I was going through a routine of nothing, and one day, when I came home from work, I realized that there was a piece of paper in my mailbox.

... What, this?

Strangely enough, I opened it, and the piece of paper bore a free email address and its password-like alphanumeric compass.

... creepy, but I was curious.

Having returned to my room early enough, I logged into an e-mail address marked with a piece of paper on my smartphone.

There's nothing in the inbox or in the outbox, it's a brand new account.

… except.

One email with draft status was left unsent.

I opened the e-mail so that I could be sucked in.

"Master Yasha Li, the pharmacist. I'm a skip tracer.

The draft email had begun with such a write-off.

This was - a letter.

"Please erase this email after reading it. This is to protect you, and this is to protect me. This address will also be closed tomorrow. Thank you for your cooperation.

After such disturbing precautions, the text in the draft email explained the title Skip Tracer.

Says Skip Tracer is the job of getting a request and searching for a missing person.

The main client is the financier.

... I mean, it's my job to find a debtor who ran away at night.

I've never known I had a job like that, but I've searched the internet and it does seem to exist.

The owner of the email explained that he had received a request from Detective Kawagoe.

The subject of the search is, of course, the brothers and sisters of the Order.

Detective Kawagoe used his connections as a police officer and was looking for both of them.

The request to Skip Tracer was one of them.

... So, maybe you two were found?

That's what I thought, and my expectations and anxieties halfway.

Maybe I'll see you two again - I'm glad you think so.

But maybe she's...

Such my heart was shattered in one sentence, though.

The email naming Skip Tracer had told him.

I lost contact with Detective Kawagoe.