Chapter 2

This happened right around my birthday, as I was closing in on my late twenties.

It was dusk—or rather, night was already falling—and I was stumbling through a filthy, narrow alleyway in the light rain.

“It hurts…”

I groaned, clutching my stomach.

It hurt. Of course it did.

I’d been stabbed in the side; it was only natural.

The wound, where the blade had been thrust deep and then pulled out, had been leaking blood steadily for a while now, no matter how hard I pressed down.

My white shirt was stained a dark, reddish-black—a color that reeked of death.

Am I going to die?

“Dammit…”

In a dark back alley like this, no one would find me.

Using every ounce of strength left in my body, I clung to the walls and tried to shuffle toward a main street with foot traffic, but my legs tangled, and I collapsed right there.

“Gah.”

As I fell and became smeared with mud, the rain mercilessly began to sap away my body temperature.

“Damn… it…”

I let out a low moan.

I tried to push myself up, only to realize my limbs were as stiff as wooden poles and wouldn’t move.

How did things end up like this?

No, the reason was perfectly clear.

I’d screwed up.

I thought that thug was just some punk acting tough; I never imagined he’d actually be a junkie.

Getting stabbed by a panicked target after witnessing a drug deal… it wasn’t even funny enough to be a joke.

If it were Marlowe—if it were Philip Marlowe—this wouldn’t have happened. Or maybe even Columbo.

I guess I just wasn’t cut out to be a detective.

I finally acknowledged what I’d already suspected deep down.

It was cold. My body was so cold I couldn’t stand it. It felt like it didn’t even belong to me anymore.

Ever since I was a kid, I’d loved books.

Especially mysteries. Holmes and Lupin, Ellery and Poe, Edogawa Ranpo… anyway, I’d devoured everything I could get my hands on.

It was so cold. It really didn’t feel like my own body.

“Heh… heh…”

Even with death right in front of me, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Mud and rainwater seeped into my mouth.

I really was the quintessential mystery geek.

I’d boastfully lecture uninterested friends about Knox’s Ten Commandments or Van Dine’s Twenty Rules, and my university graduation thesis was on “The Late Queen Problem”.¹

I read true crime and police procedurals, so it was only a natural progression to head toward a career in the force.

And while it was all well and good that I became a police officer, it was also just as typical that I couldn’t stomach the gap between ideal and reality and ended up running away.

I’d given up so quickly.

Harsh training, human relationships, and miscellaneous administrative tasks. Even though I’d thought I was prepared for them, I fell into despair when faced with those realities that were never written about in mystery novels—realities that felt utterly irrelevant to the craft.

What spurred my despair further was the realization that even after enduring all that, there were no high-profile cases, no strategy meetings where minds whirred at full capacity to solve a crime, and no investigations conducted using a blend of logic and intuition.

The person I am now isn’t the real me. It’s just a temporary version.

My true place isn’t in a hole like this.

Clinging to those excuse-like thoughts, I contemplated quitting the force, and after dragging my feet, I finally resigned after two years.

Then came the private investigator work.

I joined a detective agency, thinking that this time, I’d finally be able to demonstrate my true abilities.

Of course, the work was mostly infidelity investigations. I knew that. I knew that detectives didn’t solve murder cases like they did in novels. Even so, I believed that here, I could become the real me.

That’s what I thought.

And this was the result.

Soaked by the rain, I let a self-mocking smile slip.

Look at this pathetic state.

The only thing I ever got praised for was, at best, the way I wrote my reports. Everything else was a disaster. Tailing suspects, communicating with clients, quick-thinking in a pinch—all of it.

“I wasted my expectations on an ex-cop. The part-timer who started six months ago is more useful than you.”

Those were the words my boss spat out with a sigh just last week.

I had no comeback. It was the plain truth.

I had no sense for it. I was clumsy. I was timid.

There was a distance between the figure I’d visualized while reading books and my actual self—a distance that felt like something effort alone could never bridge.

When a person is saddled with something that effort cannot fix, what are they supposed to do?

“You just have to endure.”

Marlowe would probably say that.

So, that’s what I did.

I endured, and I kept grinding away as a bottom-tier detective.

And this was the payoff?

It was a joke.

The “real me” didn’t exist, and there was no place where my “true abilities” could ever be realized.

Hey, Marlowe.

Hard-boiled isn’t for me.

If I put in the effort, I want to be rewarded. I want to achieve my goals. I want as much power as I can get—violence, physical strength, wealth, intellect, authority.

More than anything, I want talent.

With that final, pathetic, honest thought, my consciousness began to fade.

I’m dying? Dammit.

My field of vision narrowed. The sound of the rain grew distant.

I tried to remember my parents, but instead, I found myself thinking about the mystery novel I’d left halfway through, and I let out a dying laugh.

And just like that, I died.