Chapter 4

“How long have you been here? Where did you come out from? Did you just call me a killer?”

I questioned the boy who called himself Akira.

I tried to stay calm and maintain an adult’s composure.

I couldn’t afford to be looked down upon just because he was a child.

“Fufu, what’s your name, oniisan?”

“I’m the one asking. You answer first.”

There was no way I was going to reveal my identity to some shady creep.

This boy had uttered the word murder; he might even be a witness who had watched my crime.

“If I witnessed oniisan’s crime, are you going to kill me too?”

The boy asked back with a smile.

“!”

Damn… as I thought, this boy must have witnessed my murder.

There’s no help for it… if it comes to this.

The moment I jerked both my hands up, the boy looked like he braced himself for a second, but I went right along with the momentum and dropped to my knees in dogeza before him.

“Please, let me off!”

“Eh? …What is this?”

“What you saw was self-defense! So please, keep your mouth shut, I’m begging you!”

I had already done a dogeza in front of all the employees; doing a dogeza in front of a single kid now was nothing.

“Huh? But I witnessed oniisan’s murder scene, aren’t you going to kill me?”

“Of course not! Who the hell kills a child?”

I had no hobby of murdering kids.

Besides, my first two cases were acts of providence, too.

“Hmm… somehow this is different from what I expected, but in that case, well, I guess I’ll give you a pass for now.”

Saying that, Akira held out his umbrella and pulled me under it with him.

“A-A pass…?”

I looked up at the boy.

“Yup, a pass… Oniisan, including that woman from earlier, you’ve killed two people so far, right? That means your level is 3, right? How many spells have you learned?”

“Eh? Wh-Why do you know about levels?”

“Why, you ask? Because I’m a killer just like oniisan, you see.”

“A killer…”

This boy had been spouting words like that earlier, too.

“It’s fine, you can rest easy. I’m not going to tell the police about oniisan.”

“I-Is that so?”

“Yup.”

He nodded big like a kid would.

I stood up and said,

“Hey, what is this killer thing you’re talking about—”

“My name is Akira, you know.”

He said it with a beaming smile, but the depths of his eyes didn’t look like they were laughing at all.

“Y-Yeah… What does Akira mean by a killer? What do you mean by saying you and I are the same?”

To my question, Akira stuck up his index finger.

“In this world, there are humans chosen by God whose level goes up by 1 every time they kill a single person. Those humans are called killers. In other words, people like me or oniisan.”

“…I-I see.”

So that was why both the man’s and the woman’s corpses had vanished.

“Th-Then… has Akira killed people before, too?”

“I have.”

It was a hard question to ask, but Akira answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Hey, more importantly, do you remember the question I asked?”

Akira brushed aside the experience of murder so cheerfully as if it were nothing.

“A question? Ah, it was about usable spells, right? I have two.”

I must have learned one each when I killed Goda Shinichi and that woman earlier.

“Fufu, is it really okay to tell such an important thing to someone you just met today?”

“You’re the one who asked, aren’t you? Besides, since I’m level 3, logically speaking, it’d be two, right?”

You’d learn one spell per level, after all.

“It looks like you’re misunderstanding something, so I’ll tell you: spells are completely random. Sometimes they show up when you level up, and sometimes they don’t, and there are even times when spells oniisan can use are ones I can’t.”

“Is that so?”

“Yup. Since oniisan told me, I’ll teach you a little too—among the spells I can use, there are some that turn you invisible, erase your footsteps, sense the locations of other killers, or even read the opponent’s heart.”

“You can read minds?”

…Then right now, is he literally reading my mind, too?

“Fufu. Who knows.”

Saying only that, Akira flashed a surprisingly mature wink for a kid.

Such a cheeky brat.

Ah, wait, was that thought read by him, too?

“Oniisan is interesting… Try saying ‘Status Open’.”

“What’s this all of a sudden?”

“Just try it, think of it as being tricked.”

I didn’t want to be tricked by a twelve-year-old kid, though.

“Just hurry up and do it.”

“Alright, fine… Status Open.”

The moment I spoke those words out loud,

Piko-n!

An electronic chime rang out, and letters and numbers floated up right before my eyes.