Shinkyoku Soukai : Or

## Illustrations

## Preface

My name is Leo. I am a spirit detective. Some people call me a "troublemaker." That is because, when I see someone dragged into trouble, I can never bring myself to look the other way... "Please! Save my little sister!" I answered, "Leave it to me," and threw myself into the investigation, only to find the matter turning rather thorny. At Corearu Divine Cantus Academy, where I went with my client Meilin, I discovered that the case reached far beyond anything I had imagined—was this a string of kidnappings? Had a body even turned up? Hey, hey, hey, what is going on here?! Young women, divine-cantus musicians, spirits bound by no contract—what do these three things they share actually mean? And the last thing I expected: hidden behind the case was a twisted tragedy! A man may be forceful, but he simply cannot hold out against a woman's tears!

## Prologue

Some people call me a "troublemaker." I don't mind. Sometimes I really do go too far. But rather than saying I am always stirring up trouble, or that I love meddling in other people's business, it would be simpler to say I am trouble given flesh. I have to admit that way of putting it leaves me a little regretful. Let me give you an example. You have just finished some thorny job, and you are walking the night streets thinking, "I'll have a drink at the usual bar, then head home," when suddenly you hear someone scream—what do you do? And it is not the shriek of a woman brawling with her husband. It is a cry of grief so sharp it sounds like dying. Is looking the other way the smartest thing to do? Clap your hands over your ears and pretend you heard nothing. Give up on that drink entirely, bolt home, dive under the covers, pull the blanket over your head, and mutter to yourself: "I didn't hear it. I didn't hear it. I didn't hear a thing." Is that the smartest thing to do? Somewhere, some woman you have never met may be being beaten, violated, killed. Is refusing to lift a finger the correct way to survive? It is not. Not at all! The only people who can stomach a thing like that are the ones who dare do nothing else. I am not one of those people. That being so, the first thing to do is run toward the scream. Isn't that only natural? I do not go looking for trouble. Trouble comes looking for me. In other words, well... that night, I met her. The woman was at the end of her rope, exactly the way a comic would draw it. On a lonely old street, she had been driven to the end of a dim back alley, with nowhere left to run...

## Chapter One: The Tears of N People Will Break the Taboo

1 Cadena District, in the western outskirts of Rusheceris, capital city of Torbas, wears a good many adjectives. Old town, for instance. Vagrant quarter, for instance. Crime district, for instance. Well—that may be putting it a bit harshly. Cadena is not as exaggerated as its reputation, but it is a fact that the crime rate runs higher than in other districts, and a fact that the people who live here are by no means rich. The public morals, of course, are a mess as well. If you see a black stain on the pavement, it is, more often than not, somebody's blood. A used condom tossed at the curb draws no one's notice. Here, drugs are easier to come by than cigarettes, and guns easier to come by than liquor. Once an hour, someone is beaten. Every three days, someone dies at the roadside. Every weekend night, someone is killed. That is the kind of city it is. There was a reason we set the office up in a city like that. No. I should say there used to be a reason. Goldie truly wanted to do something for the people of this city. She took on disputes even the police would not accept, hoping to save one more person if she could. They were poor, undereducated, raised in hard surroundings—and they were kind. "This is the place." A cheap mixed-use building, residences over shops. Seven steps up from a sidewalk where the concrete was flaking everywhere, and you reached the entrance. Behind the iron door beside the stairs was a storefront, though it had not opened for business in three years. "This is... here?" Beside me...

## Chapter Two: Seizing the Covenant Partner

1 The Yordon is one of the three great rivers that run the length of Torbas, north to south. Its source lies in the Soltie Mountains to the north, and it flows south in parallel with the Marut. It winds straight through the central wards, splits into the Siluz tributary just at the southern edge of Hegda, and empties into the Aronia Sea at Kumli Port. The body of Sudou Irene was found two kilometers ahead, at the boundary between Yudenomaki and Manakada, right where the river passes beneath the elevated expressway of the capital highway. I pulled the motorcycle onto the shoulder of the bridge and stopped. It was a big machine. Once I kicked the stand down, the westering sun flashed bright off the silver gleam of the engine. A moment ago, up on the bridge, I had been riding the arterial—three lanes in each direction. The expressway ran overhead. Beneath the bridge, the Yordon murmured along. The water was not bad, but this close to the estuary the surface looked like a sullen sky. I leaned on the railing and stared ahead. Weeds grew thick along both banks, and the ground was broad, a long empty strip stretching on and on. Whether the embankments on either side were closed to pedestrians or not, there was not a soul in sight. Honestly, though, both sides of the river were almost nothing but factories and warehouses. No one would come here for a stroll. And Sudou Irene had been dumped in a place like this. "Eighteen people..." Elbows on the bridge rail, I let out a breath. If a case like Irene's had already appeared, it was reasonable to suspect that the rest...

## Chapter Three: Bonds Twisted Awry

1 I watched Alexia's cute little car drive off, then swung onto the motorcycle and left the hospital. I meant to stop back at the hotel while the morning still held. The bike slid into the underground garage and into my reserved space. I took the saddlebags off the tank. Two bags without straps of their own, joined by a wide belt. Hang that belt over the tank or the saddle, and the bags ride the bike one to each side. They were meant to hang from the saddle, which is why they are called saddlebags. Whenever I have something to carry, they are a favorite of mine. And when I use them as an ordinary bag, I sling the belt over my shoulder, so one hangs at my chest and the other at my back. I stepped into the elevator, bound for the top floor, then drew a small folded slip of paper from my pocket. On it was that strange figure. When Alexia and I parted in front of the hospital, she had copied it onto another page of her handbook, torn it out, and given it to me. An oval of bewildering, intricate construction. No matter how I looked at it, I could not read it. What mattered more was that I seemed to have seen it somewhere before. Not only the victims knew it. Even I knew it, and I was no party to the case—which meant it was very likely a perfectly ordinary design. The logo of Leolau Burgers, for instance. But even if a witness said they had seen "Buffy Leolau" near the place where someone was held, that would hardly be a lead. Leolau Burger shops are everywhere. Walk down a main street and you will not...

## Final Chapter

The Niken City Police do not have a Spirit Section. So not only an investigation, but even the detention of a spirit under suspicion, requires borrowing the Spirit Section facilities of some other city's police. That is exactly why I was thrown into the spirit holding cells of the Torbas City Police. The floor of this lockup, the walls, the ceiling, even the iron bars, are all inscribed with spirit script. My term of detention was one week. During it I was questioned several times. But on the morning after that week, the one who came to meet me from the other side of the bars was not the usual officer. These two I knew quite well. "Good morning." The one who smiled, bright and easy, was a woman in a suit. "Learned your lesson a little, Mr. Blond?" My consulting attorney—beautiful enough that a human man would fall for her at a glance—gave a wry smile as she said it. Today her thick, watery-blue hair was pinned up again, and the pale shape of her head was startlingly lovely. "A little, yeah." I winked at her through the bars. But there was another person beside her, come to press me about that business. "You really are taking it easy! How many times do you have to be thrown in a cell before you understand?" It was the poor man whose face was set hard behind his glasses: Inspector Zhenqu Matariski. "Since I became your inspector, do you have any idea how far my performance review has dropped?" Well, of course it has. Inspector Zhenqu was my supervising inspector during the Clement incident. From then on, he has been responsible for watching my day-to-day conduct. When the situation calls for it, he even takes the stance of a mentor, but...

## Afterword

"I really want to read a story with Leo as the lead~" The person who said that was, in fact, the editor-in-chief. It was not long after the manuscript was finished for Volume Four of Divine Cantus Black—that is, the Dark Series of the Divine Cantus Symphony—titled Dark Triangle. He seemed to think very highly of Leogara, who made his first appearance in that book. "He is a character who could carry a story as the protagonist!" Is that so? I turned it over for quite a while. I remember it was about a month later when, all at once, I finally "understood" the character of Leo—what I "saw" was not him as a supporting role, but Leo as the lead. "About what you mentioned last time—that really can be written now. I see how to write it." "Oh? Then I'll clear a slot for it." "What?" "Let's write it! Write Leo's story!" "You say write it—who is supposed to hold the pen?" "Huh? Honestly, you, of course!" The date was January, Seien 2007. Yes. The editor-in-chief of GA Bunko is just that casual a person. And so I finished a strange work that is neither a side story of Divine Cantus Black, nor quite an independent series on the order of Divine Cantus Gold. This is "Leo's story." Beyond that, I do not know how to explain it. So the title was set as Reviver: Leo. Leaving off the fixed habit of putting a color in the title comes from the same reason. If it can run parallel in time with Divine Cantus Black, and let everyone see the feats of Leo's that Divine Cantus Black never described...