Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume2 Chapter2 (section)

===Part 9===

“Onii-chan. How many times do I have to tell you this is a shut-in girl’s final stronghold?”

“And?”

“Why and for what possible reason are you thoughtlessly bringing yet another girl here!? It doesn’t make any sense!!”

It was just before ten at night.

They had run across that summoner assassin at around 7:30. After the ten minute battle, they had spent about an hour at the laundromat and then come here, so that meant they had taken a very careful and roundabout route.

That showed just how cautious Kyousuke was about their enemies.

Librarian-chan’s clothing had made a full recovery in the washer and dryer and Kyousuke had his hoodie back, so he was back to normal aside from the faint scent of soap on his hoodie.

“Oh, this is the new Korokke-chan they were selling at the convenience store. It’s a special for the Rainy Screen campaign and it has Western wasabi powder on it.”

“Hm. That I’ll take. I still refuse to accept my Onii-chan’s thoughtless behavior, though!!”

As she complained, Aika opened up the paper bag used to shake up the wasabi powder-covered fried food.

“Um, Kyousuke-chan,” cut in Lu Niang Lan. “Something greasy probably isn’t best, so did you buy a normal meal too?”

“We bought and ate sautéed pork and grilled vegetable sandwiches on the way. More importantly, I have something to ask you, Lu-san.”

“Before that.”

“?”

“How about you look after that girl? She looks really jumpy and isn’t showing any sign of joining in the conversation.”

When the Modified China Dress Beauty pointed that out, Kyousuke looked behind him.

The always cheerful Librarian-chan had become incredibly quiet ever since entering the large living room. She was wearing her idea of adult-looking clothes after drying them at the laundromat. She uncomfortably fidgeted with her braided hair, but it was not that she was feeling shy around the strange people here.

The real reason was obvious.

It had to be the “sofa” that Swimsuit Girl Aika was leaning against.

Anyone would grow nervous when faced with five meter beast.

“U-um, Shiroyama-kun? That’s a pet, isn’t it? It isn’t going to get up and roar, is it?”

“Don’t ask me. But knowing Aika, I doubt it’s been trained properly. And I’m not too confident a white liger can even be tamed in the first place.”

“Then why are you all so calm!?”

“Shh! Shouting or turning your back on it is dangerous!”

Meanwhile, Aika, its owner, was leaning up against the beast in a completely defenseless outfit while chowing down on junk food that had to be stimulating the animal’s stomach with its smell. It was unclear what was safe and what was dangerous.

“And if you feel unsafe, you can always hide behind Lu-san. If the beast goes on a rampage, she can deal with it barehanded.”

“Umm, that’s scary enough on its own. Is she a hermit who lives deep in the mountains or something?”

Librarian-chan’s voice was shaking.

But since that young woman had the skill to take out any summoner with nothing but her bare hands and hidden weapons, it may have been right to worry about her more than the white liger.

“So Kyousuke-chan, what did you want to ask me?”

“It’s about the Illegal assassin that showed up at the end of everything at the airport before,” said Kyousuke. “He attacked us earlier, so do you know anything about him?”

“Oh, him.” Lu Niang Lan seemed hesitant. “I decided to look into him since he pissed me off…but I couldn’t find any Illegal records on him.”

“What does that mean?”

“Since he showed up there, his actions had to have been a plus for Illegal, but he may have been a summoner with no connection to us, a Freedom summoner that Illegal hired through an intermediary, or…”

“A secret weapon who Illegal keeps hidden?”

The information had dried up right off the bat.

That was fine if they never saw him again after that one battle, but the odds of that were low. So it was best if they could gather some information on his habits, special traits, and weaknesses, but…

“By the way, Kyousuke-chan, how skilled was this unknown?”

“He was more of a pain than he was powerful. We used the full ten minutes, but we never even made it out of the Regulation-class and to the Divine-class.”

“An interference type, huh? That does sound like a pain.” Lu Niang Lan smiled and waved a hand dismissively. “Then, Kyousuke-chan, besides his technique as a summoner, did you sense anything about his principles…or rather, did he seem to follow any inviolable rules?”

“Hm?”

Librarian-chan looked confused, so the Modified China Dress Beauty raised her index finger and explained.

“In Illegal, we don’t bother obeying the existing laws and treaties. We don’t gain anything by obeying them since we specifically exist as an organization not protected by the government. In that case, what do we obey? That would be the inviolable rules of our team or the bonds of blood of our family.”

“Stop trying to make yourself sound good when you’re just a group of perverted criminals who kidnap, confine, and assassinate people.”

“From your perspective in Government, maybe. But in Illegal, it’s all based on our own rules which are meant to maintain order. In other words, it’s the same as what you call an investigation, an arrest, an arraignment, a trial, and a punishment. And it’s obvious what wins out when the existing laws clash with our inviolable rules.”

That was why Government and Illegal simply could not get along.

The people of the heavens above controlled the international laws while looking down on everyone. The people of the earth below corrupted the masses from within to expand their own share.

Freedom joined neither side but helped both, so they basically had extraterritoriality like Nagasaki’s Dejima. Of course, they did not just obey them. If either one went too far, they were prepared to retaliate with an intense war. In a way, they were the individual summoners who fought alone against an international coalition force or an international mafia. That was (the original meaning of) Freedom.

“Those inviolable rules and bonds of blood aren’t unified within Illegal. If the summoner who attacked you really was from Illegal, knowing his principles could help narrow it down to the specific team or family.”

Kyousuke shrugged at Lu Niang Lan’s suggestion.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know that much. All I know is he has pride in his work as an assassin, he’ll speak with his target but not empathize with them, he’s willing to use tricks or deceit to take out his target, and he’s fixated on the Rainy Girl.”

Librarian-chan hesitantly cut in there.

“I asked this before, but how is that assassin connected with us? The Rainy Girl is just a rumor to most people, right? And from what you’ve said, ghosts aren’t very significant to summoners.”

“Lu-san.”

“Didn’t I already tell you that unknown wasn’t in any of Illegal’s records? Don’t ask me for help here.”

“Oh, right. It might be a fake name, but what about someone named Benikomichi Fuuki? She’s our student council president but also the vessel for that assassin…Hayato I think she called him.”

“Benikomichi, hm? Give me a second. I’ll shoot some Illegal people an email and ask them to gather some information.”

Lu Niang Lan operated her smartphone with her index finger as she spoke.

She seemed entirely carefree.

Aika must have thought the half-eaten korokke tasted too bland because she put it back in the paper bag and shook it around.

“To be blunt, maybe that assassin is the one behind the murder the ghost is based on. Maybe he’s afraid of you approaching the truth as you pursue the ghost.”

“I…doubt that.”

Librarian-chan immediately rejected the idea.

She had a simple reason.

“The murderer was caught almost immediately. He was a crazy man. My parents told me not to watch the news, but I still remember it. Was it called genetic tuning? He was apparently like a mass of muscles that completely ignored the usual skeletal structure. That boy was only about twelve, so I doubt he was behind some murder in the past.”

Kyousuke agreed with that assessment.

“I disagree with the idea that a small child can’t kill, but, well, I agree he wasn’t behind the murder.”

“Why?”

“We aren’t quite sure who he is and he might not even be with Illegal, but I’m pretty sure he’s still an assassin. He wasn’t the type to kill for his own sake. And based on what I’ve heard of your family, Librarian-chan, I doubt it would have been worth hiring a professional assassin to attack a child. Of course, that would change if your parents were politicians or executives of an international corporation.”

“But then this makes no sense, does it?” said Lu Niang Lan. “We know this unknown is standing in your way. And we know he is skilled enough to instantly resolve that airport occupation by stably and reliably summoning a Divine-class without relying on beginner’s luck. I wonder why he’s challenging you to a fight.”

“Maybe he was lying at some point or we made a mistake at some point,” said Kyousuke. “The Rainy Girl, a murder from the past, an Illegal summoner, and a professional assassin… One of our premises is off and that’s why the gears don’t seem to fit together. But they must fit together. We’re holding something worth sending in that assassin. So what exactly is it we’re not seeing here?”

Aika and Lu Niang Lan exchanged a glance.

As outsiders, they readily gave objective opinions.

“Is it possible the Rainy Girl doesn’t actually have anything to do with that past murder?”

“That was definitely my sister.”

“Could the unknown be an amateur assassin who’s only claiming to be a professional?”

“With that skill and pride? I doubt it.”

Their suggestions were not serious. They were simply cutting away the blatantly needless fat.

And finally, just the core remained.

“Maybe the crux of the issue isn’t the Rainy Girl,” muttered Kyousuke.

Librarian-chan frowned.

“Wait a minute. What do you mean? All of this weird stuff started when I started seeing that ghost.”

“But that premise might be wrong.” Kyousuke chose his words carefully. “I’m not suggesting the Rainy Girl isn’t real. I saw her with you, after all. …But is she really a ''naturally appearing ghost''? Ghosts can be explained with the rules of the summoning ceremony. And if they can be explained with them, they can also be reproduced with them. Which means…”

“Oh, I get it,” said Lu Niang Lan as she placed a hand on her forehead.

Librarian-chan still didn’t seem to understand, so Kyousuke stated his conclusion.

“In other words, there might be a completely different plan at work here. ''And as a side effect, it just so happened to cause the Rainy Girl to appear.'' That would mean the ghost isn’t at the center of all this. It’s just that we might discover the truth behind it and whatever it’s connected to.”

And if they pursued the cause of the Rainy Girl, they would run into the assassins’ plan. Afraid they would discover what was going on, the assassins had acted first.

Since they had already been monitoring Librarian-chan’s home or the surrounding cellphone towers, the assassins had to be aware that the Rainy Girl was their Achilles’ heel.

They had not annihilated her with an Incense Grenade, so they may have had a reason to keep her around or her appearances were too random to reliably run across her.

“But…” Librarian-chan started to reject the idea on reflex, but then she had second thoughts. “The rumors of the Rainy Girl only started spreading over the internet after I entered high school. At the very least, my sister’s ghost wasn’t seen when I was in elementary and middle school.”

“If she started appearing recently, it might be best to assume something happened recently to cause it.”

“Hmm…” muttered Aika while licking off her greasy fingers.

She then grabbed the notebook-sized tablet from the glass table. The entire ceiling functioned as a giant projection screen.

It showed a simple map of Toy Dream 35.

Red, yellow, green, and blue colored bars appeared on the edge of the map. It looked a lot like the rain map shown on the weather forecast.

“What is this, Aika?”

“Packet Atmosphere. It’s a type of information system built by Government. Simply put, it visualizes the distribution of rumors.”

“Can you make that more detailed but simpler?”

“Don’t underestimate the expressiveness of a shut-in. With the cooperation of a major mobile SNS, we can run automatic searches of when and where different keywords were typed in and then it can be displayed on the map according to time. Surely you can understand that.”

For example, research had shown that areas with an explosive increase in searches for “the flu” really did have an outbreak of the flu. Necessity was the mother of invention and people wanted to search when they had the search box right in front of their eyes.

What Aika was using had narrowed that down to more of a pinpoint. When she entered a search term, the devices that had made corresponding blog entries or SNS posts would be listed up and the device locations would be displayed on the map.

For example…

“Let’s try searching for ‘house fire’. And look.”

Colors were added to the map of Toy Dream 35. Blue and green dots were scattered around, but the dots were noticeably clustered around a few spots. And they had warning colors of red and yellow.

“Most likely, there are actual houses on fire in those areas.”

“This system throws the concepts of personal information and privacy out the window,” commented Lu Niang Lan. “But what else would you expect from the governments and corporations of Government?”

“SNSs are used by people who want to show off. Plus, this just ''scrapes'' all that text with a program, so we’re not actually reading what their blogs say.”

“Wait, Aika. I’m pretty sure you’ve crossed a line when you start displaying their location without permission.”

“Onii-chan, are you the kind of Onii-chan that uses logic to trample on the cooperation of a benevolent soul? Anyway, we can use this to find exactly how far the rumors of the Rainy Girl have spread.”

After Aika narrowed the results down to Toy Dream 35 and entered the search term they actually cared about, the results appeared almost instantly.

Just like on a weather forecast, they could fast-forward through time to see the clusters of red, yellow, green, and blue dots crawling along like living creatures.

The SNS’s first hit for the Rainy Girl was about a month before. As Librarian-chan had suggested it was at the start of April when the school year had begun.

Dots sporadically appeared and disappeared from there, but there were places where they occasionally grew like crazy as if people had suddenly remembered it.

“R Block, April 15, 10 PM. S Block, April 17, 2 AM. D Block, April 23, 1:30 PM…”

“Are these red places where my sister’s ghost was seen?”

“That’s just when the witnesses posted about it on the SNS, so she might have also appeared where no one saw it.”

“Come to think of it, these aren’t where I saw her…”

Librarian-chan looked up at the map on the ceiling with a troubled look on her face.

Kyousuke spoke to Aika.

“Do you know what happened at these times? Did a ghost story TV drama air, was a sound truck with a message about demons driving around, or was a costume parade underway? It could be anything. I just want something that matches all of these appearance times.”

“Government’s got you covered.”

Aika minimized the Packet Atmosphere window and opened a different application. A bunch of text scrolled quickly by and finally some human-readable text started appearing.

“I’ve detected a few patterns that match the noise problem.”

“Like what? It could be a lot of things: people, vehicles, buildings, etc.”

“It seems to be a building… Look.”

Aika gave the answer.

“Here it is. It fits the operation records for the Toshima Industries 3rd Toy Factory on the outskirts of Toy Dream 35.”

“Isn’t that the factory that makes the character goods that Toy Dream 35 sells?” asked a skeptical Librarian-chan.

The Toy Dream Company’s international revived city project bought up rural cities that had fallen into bankruptcy and remade them into giant amusement parks, but that of course did not entirely eliminate the unease and backlash from the local residents. To erase that sort of impression, the amusement park city contained almost no manufacturing facilities. From food to industrial products, it was almost entirely reliant on the nearby cities. That way they shared the wealth with the local residents instead of monopolizing it.

“The Rainy Girl rumors perfectly match the time they spent testing a new production line. Most likely, that’s had some kind of effect.”

“A factory testing a new line on rainy nights…” muttered Kyousuke, but that was not enough to reach an answer.

“But they aren’t going to all this effort just to summon my sister to scare me…right? And if they were trying to get the ghost to kill me, a simple knife seems like a better method.”

“We’ll just have to look into this and figure out whether she’s their objective or just a side effect.”

Of course, things were likely to change if they actually snuck into the toy factory on the outskirts of the city.

It had likely been turned into Hayato and Benikomichi Fuuki’s hideout.

“Librarian-chan.”

“My name, my name. …And what is it?”

“You asked me to protect you from the Rainy Girl. If that’s all you want, we might not need to investigate this factory. It might be enough to just wait for the Rainy Girl to appear and annihilate her.”

“But…we’re up against assassins, right? And they came to kill us because we were becoming a problem. Can we really step down from the stage now?”

“Based on the situation surrounding the attack, they were monitoring your home or the surrounding area. Since they hadn’t done anything before, it might mean they won’t actually kill you. If you weren’t going to approach the truth, they were going to leave you alone.”

“…”

“So with that in mind, let me ask again: what do you want to do? I don’t mind if you make that decision.”

“Is that even a question?”

Librarian-chan did not hesitate to answer.

Even though she had likely reached an instinctual understanding of their opponent’s skill.

“I’m still scared of my sister. I really think she’s trying to kill me. But this isn’t right. That factory might be summoning her, right? Even if we defeat her, she might appear again as long as that factory’s still running. I can’t allow that kind of pain. What do they think a human being is? Even if she’s dead, she’s still a human being. Do they really need someone to explain to them that the dead have rights too!?”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to destroy that factory. But I need power to do that. Shiroyama-kun, lend me a hand. I’m sure that will solve all of this.”

Unlike before, she did not just ask for “help”.

Instead of hoping someone else would do something, she wanted a helping hand to do something herself.

Kyousuke smiled a little.

And he answered.

“Then let’s go with that.”

He spoke clearly as if to motivate himself.

“I don’t know who we’re up against, but this means war.”