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Section 1
## Illustrations
## Prologue
Taiwan edition. Transcribed from Light Novel Kingdom. Scans: Banned Guy Cleanup: Qiujing When Tamano Ranpo reached the scene—the plaza before Ueno Station—the hour had just slipped into ōmagatoki (note: the twilight hour, when day and night trade places). Kerosene lamps lit the square, and not one panicked figure in the crowd could hide. Students in high-collared uniforms, bloodless and thinking only of flight; a woman frozen in place with a child, staring blankly, unable to move; a gentleman in a top hat calling out something no one could make out… Ranpo threaded between them and slipped quickly toward the heart of the scene. The “girl” he had been pursuing all this time had to be there. “—Off the right-hand side of the square as you leave it! The relief corps is standing by there!” At the far side of the press of bodies, a policewoman with a saber in one hand was guiding the crowd. “Run that way! If you can’t move, tell me!” The authority in her voice eased the confusion around her by a fraction. People came back to themselves, started forward, and fled the scene as directed. “Miss Kikyo!” Ranpo ran toward her, calling her name at a volume that was nearly a shout. “Oh. If it isn’t Tamano.” Patrol Chief Hinohoshi Kikyo turned her head while still holding her guard. Her long hair spilled over the collar of her uniform. “You’ve come all the way out here—another story, is it?” “Yes!” “That drive of yours is admirable, but don’t go and get yourself killed! So long as there’s a breath left in you, Suiren still has a way!” With that, she flicked her eyes toward what lay behind her. There…
## Act One
Taishō 11, March 16 Teito Nichinichi Gazette, morning edition The Falling Girl Battles the Puppet Troupe in Ueno Last night, around eight in the evening. Some ten living dolls appeared in Ueno and attacked imperial-capital residents passing nearby. Men and students on their way home were among the dead; eleven people in all were killed. The Falling Girl then appeared, hurled the living dolls down from on high, and drove them off. This was the twelfth attack launched by the Puppet Troupe. The sixth clash with the Falling Girl. In addition, this paper’s reporter succeeded for the first time in witnessing the fight in person. What follows is a detailed account of how it unfolded— * “How many times do I have to say it before you understand?” Past noon, in Fujimi-chō, Kojimachi Ward, inside the newsroom of the Teito Nichinichi Gazette. Editor-in-chief Tōjō frowned and twisted his mustache. “I’m well aware of the effort you put in, Tamano. Look across the whole imperial capital and the only reporter who has actually seen the Falling Girl fight is you, I’d wager. Even so, the pieces you write are quite capable of canceling that advantage out at a stroke—they’re dull.” Seated in his leather chair, he was immensely fat, like a kagami mochi that had overflowed its sanbō (note: sanbō, the offering stand on which mirror-rice cakes are set), and what came off him was a displeasure that had nothing whatever to do with a festive air. Troubled, he shifted his gaze out the window. Pigeon lofts on the roof of the building next door and the streets of Kagurazaka came into view. The capital had been mild and fine for days on end; today a wind blew that called winter to mind. “For instance, look at these pieces.” Tōjō produced several…
## Act Two
“What do I have to do… to get even a little closer to the core…” —Two weeks had passed since he sealed the “interview contract” with Saeka. After finishing what amounted to his fourth combat interview, Ranpo murmured to himself in “this space,” a place he did not know well. “It’s about time I worked out some kind of strategy…” The words, almost unconscious, struck the lavishly grained wooden walls and vanished unheard. After the contract was made, his work as a reporter went smoothly. Whenever the living dolls appeared, the Kaiya household telephoned the newsroom. Ranpo rushed to the scene as instructed and, almost without fail, covered each fight from start to finish with nothing left out. As a result, he gradually came to know a great many things. Saeka really did keep up that villain’s manner from beginning to end. And yet she was, of all things, perfectly reasonable; in conversation one even had the rare sense that she was rational. Only when she faced castella did she turn scrupulously polite. Ranpo, as he was now, could at last begin to recognize the Falling Girl—whom he had until then taken for “terror given form”—as a human being. What was more, having gained so powerful a weapon as “faithful descriptions of the fighting,” his articles were gradually becoming the talk of the capital. The prose was still plain, but the exceptional volume of information was said to be drawing a good deal of favorable comment, and thanks to that Tōjō’s mood of late had been rather fine. But— “What is it, really…” —The crucial mystery of the living dolls’ true nature remained unsolved. The master of the Puppet Troupe had not shown himself again since the last time, and Ranpo still could not make out…
## Act Three
“—In recognition of the achievements set out above, Tamano Ranpo is this day promoted to senior reporter.” At the end of the morning meeting. Tōjō announced it thus, and applause broke out through the newsroom. “Well then, Tamano, say a few words.” “Yes.” Ranpo took a step forward, looked over the reporters standing in rows before him, and offered a short remark. —The article Ranpo had written on the Kakugai Building incident had whipped up a storm inside the imperial capital. When an incident of that scale occurred, Ranpo had been on the scene from first to last, and the volume of information he held naturally overwhelmed every other paper. “Tamano Ranpo, who reads the police’s movements and accompanies compulsory searches,” came to be known throughout the capital as a crisp, capable reporter. On the strength of that, the Teito Nichinichi Gazette’s circulation drew level with the three papers called the great houses—“Shoka News,” “the Jiji Press,” and “the Maichō National News”—and it would not be too much to say that the Gazette had formally joined the ranks of the “major papers.” That the man who had accomplished this feat alone should be promoted was half expected. “…Ah—as you all know, the ‘Puppet Troupe case’ in Tamano’s charge still has not yielded a thread that would unravel everything.” After Ranpo finished his remarks, Tōjō took the floor again. “Statements of responsibility keep arriving, and the riddles only grow more tangled, so—I’m counting on still more vigorous work from you in the days ahead, Tamano!” Tōjō clapped Ranpo on the back and laughed, thoroughly satisfied. “The rest of you, don’t lose to Tamano. Study every day and work hard! That is all!” “Ahh—this puts a clear gap between you and me.” Back at his own desk…
## Act Four
—Several days had already passed since Ranpo was locked in a detention cell at the Metropolitan Police Department. He swallowed a bland, tasteless breakfast and tidied what needed tidying around him. “—Today’s consolation.” Several newspapers were pushed through a small window in the metal door. “Thank you….” After giving thanks, Ranpo reached out with a hand whose wounds still hurt, took the papers, and began checking the articles. —A few minutes later. “…Just as I thought.” His shoulders slumped, and disappointment slipped into his voice without his meaning it to. —The suspect in the Puppet Troupe case has yet to confess. —The Falling Girl’s movements are unknown. —The Metropolitan Police launch a search; has the partnership collapsed? Not one of the headlines showed the slightest consideration of the possibility that Ranpo and Saeka had in fact been framed. Ever since Morisu led the army in surrounding and capturing them, the world had come to know the two of them completely as “the masterminds who staged the Puppet Troupe case themselves.” …She was indeed a venomous person, and he knew her far too well. Treat them as the ringleaders, and the whole case could certainly be brought to a neat close. And yet—in fact, neither Ranpo nor Saeka was the culprit. There was still no sign the false charge would be cleared, and not a soul would listen to what he said. Under those conditions, Ranpo piled up disappointment day after day. So that was it… misunderstanding was a thing that spread so easily; the truth was something that went on being concealed… “…Hah.” And then— “…I’ll write the article. I’ll let the whole country know about that slapdash search of yours, and about the illegal interrogation, the way it really was…
## Final Act
“A recommendation for organizational reform from the government, and an order dismissing the commissioner, have already reached the Metropolitan Police Department.” A set-meal shop, past noon. Usuki, sitting across from Ranpo and reading the paper, said it to him. “Now the Metropolitan Police have no choice but to clean house thoroughly. The torture during interrogations, and the graft among some of the senior officers, had been overlooked all this time… The police organization has ‘modernized’ at last. Look—that superintendent was demoted too.” “Where does it say that?” Ranpo took the paper from Usuki’s hands and skimmed the article. Pain still throbbed through his outstretched arm, but the injuries over the rest of his body were nearly healed. —After the fighting that day, every newspaper and every broadcast rushed to report the “truth” Ranpo had exposed. The one pulling the strings of the living-doll case was an elite detective of the Metropolitan Police Department. And the root cause lay in the corruption inside the department. Seen from the outcome, it was the Falling Girl who had shown her mettle and stopped the detective’s rampage. …Of course, not a word was said of her true identity, nor of the castella. In the end—the corruption of the Metropolitan Police became a social problem, and matters developed until the state itself took the lead in setting it right. …It had not been by design, but one might say Kikyo’s last wish had been fulfilled. “…Still, though.” Usuki drained the tea in his cup and narrowed his eyes. “I never thought the Falling Girl would actually let you interview her.” “…Is that so?” “I was only guessing at random. I’d figured there had to be something hidden in it, but I didn’t think I’d actually be right.” “It’s this…
## Afterword
When the previous series came to an end, I distinctly told my editor, K, “Next time I want to write a comedy full of cheer!” When the result was in, what I had finished was a work in this style, and I was considerably surprised myself. I am Misaki Saginomiya. While writing this book, I tried all sorts of ways of looking into materials on the Taishō era. I read books, pored over the maps of the time, and even went to a restaurant founded in Shōwa 3, a place where one can still catch, more or less, a breath of Taishō. Doing so, I gradually came to understand the manners and atmosphere of those days, and I came into contact with the various charms of the Taishō era. What drew me most was the culture among schoolgirls then. They coined any number of fashionable phrases, cared a great deal about how they dressed, yearned after the stars of the opera troupes… They lived spirited lives that lost nothing to high-school girls today, and I was captivated at once. Correspondence among friends was said to be very frequent as well, and learning that even stirred an odd feeling in me: ah, in any era, a girl is a girl. Speak of nearly a hundred years ago and it can seem so distant that no feeling rises at all, but perhaps human disposition has not, in fact, changed very much. The heroine of this book is a girl in her teens, the same age as those schoolgirls. Only, as the result of my packing in every one of my personal preferences, she seems to lean neither toward the Taishō schoolgirl nor toward the modern high-school girl, and has grown into a character of another dimension entirely. She is a rather obsessive and troublesome girl, but there are some rather endearing things about her too, aren’t there. As the parent who gave birth to her…