女面 - Bungo Stray Dogs Fanfiction

第十七話

With a frown, the young detective continuously scrolled through her laptop reading the text on the screen. "This is too much of a coincidence." she commented lowly.

Things were supposed to be back to normal after the war with the Guild. Fumiko was sitting comfortably at a corner in Doutor enjoying her breakfast while snooping around the internet until she received an email forwarded by the President with several news articles enclosed. After taking a look at them, each of them reported a rather peculiar incident involving the suicide of an ability user, with one of them that happened recently in Taipei. But that wasn't what Fumiko thought was weird. This wasn't the first time she'd heard such news, and to have everything bogged down to suicide was too much of a coincidence. Was it really possible to have so many ability users across the globe to commit suicide? She wouldn't know. And there's no point spending the entire day here thinking about it. Taking the final gulp of her iced latte, she shut her laptop, packed her belongings, and left the shop.

But that morning wasn't going as smoothly as she thought. When she glanced at her wristwatch, her eyes widened with shock. "Oh no, I'm going to be late!" she cried, not noticing the weird stares she received from passers-by. She'd been so caught up updating herself with the case that she didn't realise she was going to be late for a meeting; which she just remembered. As much as she wished to use her ability to teleport herself to the meeting room, there's no point fatiguing herself for something so trivial. So she picked up the pace and ran towards the Agency building. By the time she reached the door, she was leaning against the wall trying to catch her breath as much as she could. After taking one deep breath and then exhaling out, she knocked on the wooden door and said, "Excuse me!" She partially opened the door and entered the dark room before shutting it behind. "My apologies for arriving later than usual. Has the meeting started?"

"No worries." assured Kunikida, who was the Chairperson of the meeting this time. He stood at the front with the projector screen rolled down and a paused video was displayed on it from the projector. "We just started the meeting, so you didn't miss much."

"Okay." She walked over to the unoccupied seat on Naomi's right and took a seat.

"Let's continue." said the bespectacled man who pressed a button on the remote controller to play the video. "This is footage from a security camera in Taipei, Taiwan. As you can see, the fog erupted in a matter of minutes, and vanished. But this isn't a weather anomaly." He pressed another button to reveal different footage. "Suspicious bodies were discovered after the fog. This burnt corpse."

"Terrible." commented Atsushi quietly.

"Kunikida." called Ranpo.

"Yes?" responded the said man.

After shoving a piece of chip into his mouth and munched on it, he said, "This person is an ability user."

"You're correct, Ranpo-san." said the bespectacled man. "He was a well-known fire-wielding ability user in his area." After revealing the user's profile, he pressed another button on the remote controller to show a picture of a different country where a similarly peculiar incident happened. "This is Singapore, a year ago. Sure enough, a dense fog emerged. Another suspicious corpse was discovered after it dissipated. He was a card-wielding ability user. A talented assassin." Pressing the button, he showed another picture of a woman's body suspending in the air with long ice shards piercing her. "Detroit, half a year ago. Another body discovered after the fog. As you can imagine, she was an ice-wielding ability user."

"In other words, after the strange fog, these gifted people across the world died by their own abilities." concluded Fukuzawa.

"Is the fog somehow related?" questioned Kenji.