Read Daily Updated Light Novel, Web Novel, Chinese Novel, Japanese And Korean Novel Online.
Kara no Kyoukai (Light Novel) - Volume 2, Part V: Paradox Spiral, Prologue
Volume 2, Part V: Paradox Spiral, Prologue
This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml
This is the year when autumn went as fast as it came.
Having just entered the departing days of November, and with winter already well underway, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department found another strange tale adrift on its shores. To be fair, ghost stories and the like were never out of season for the Crime Investigation Section, a trait it lovingly shares with hospitals all over the city. It’s practically a year-round campfire, huddling together in a dark corner of the human experiment to share what new stories the city decided to churn out the murder mill.
Which is probably why when Detective Akimi, who is as natural a police as they come, actually gets interested in a case of his own accord, it is a case of some deserved curiosity. Akimi built his career on stone whodunits, a man who loved the mystery. Combine this with him hearing gossip about a very peculiar report, and you have him phoning the relevant stations for the very same report in no time at all.
So far however, reading the plainly written report held little for him. It told a story of a bizarrely failed burglary that took place in some residential high-rise a small ways away from downtown in early October. The perp was a joe with a previous record, an all too common caper: burgle the apartments of people who’d just left it unlocked. Simple, old, but still effective. The day of the incident, he stole into just such an apartment after staking the place out and waiting for someone to leave, which was probably the extent of his planning.
What came after was what made this report interesting. Apparently, the same guy came running to the nearest police station yelling for help. The on-duty officers eventually got a story out of his hysteria: that he saw the dead bodies of the family that lived in the apartment he broke into. An officer escorted him back to the apartment immediately, only to find that the family he spoke of was indeed there. On the other hand, they weren’t dead. Instead, they were in quite good health and in fact enjoying a family dinner. This understandably disturbed the burglar, though the officer really cared only about the fact that the man had exposed himself to breaking and entering, and thus, took him into custody.
Leaning back on his squeaky pipe chair, Detective Akimi offers an incredulous “What the fuck?” at the air, directed at no one. The suspect tested negative for alcohol or drugs, and didn’t suffer from any glaring mental health problems. Certainly a strange and curious report, but otherwise, there didn’t seem to be a case here, if it was worthy of even being called one. Hardly a case to stand beside the current investigation that’s got half the section in a rustle: four missing one after another, with no clue as to their whereabouts, and four families that they needed to shut up while they worked the case from an angle that benefited from their silence. Much like the serial killings three years ago, it’s resulted in many a sleepless night for him, and he certainly didn’t need this case to add more.
Still, he could feel the hairs on his back rise when he read the report, a feeling that he’d learned to trust as the instinct that something was there, waiting to be discovered; maybe even a report that could be turned into a case with legs to spit shine the clearance rate.
“Worth a call, at least,” Akimi says as he picks up the receiver on his desk phone and puts it to his ear. He dials the number of the station where the report came from. Before long, an on-duty officer answers and Akimi starts to inquire for details on the report. Did they check with the other tenants for anything out of place? Did they find any inconsistency with the suspect’s description of the family? But it becomes fruitless as the answers fit his expectations, that they had indeed asked the neighbors, and no there was nothing out of place, and that the description of the perp was spot-on except with regards to the family’s state of being. With quick thanks, Akimi puts the receiver back.
At that instant, a voice calls him from behind. “What are you on the phone for, Daisuke? You need to get rolling. The second guy’s body’s just been found, and you’re the primary on the case.”
“Fuck it, another one? Don’t tell me it’s another partially eaten body.” Akimi’s friend only responds with a curt nod, which is his cue to drop his curiosity and get out of here. No one’s going to care about the report, but it was all tumbleweeds when he read it anyway. And nothing takes priority over this new serial murder case. With that, the report goes back into file in a cabinet somewhere to be forgotten, even by Detective Akimi, the CIS’s lover of mysteries.
