Wait—no, I can't run. Calm down. Stay calm.
If I run now, I might as well wait for my reputation to be utterly destroyed!
Steady your breathing!
So what if it's just a wild Ranpo?
Inside Asou Akiya's mind, waves crashed like a raging storm. If the world would grant him a single chance to rewind time, he would choose overtime without hesitation today. Even if the one calling out to him had been that pitch-black sludge of a man, Dazai Osamu, he would not have panicked like this. A young Dazai, for all his brilliance, was still inexperienced; clever as he was, he had yet to reach the level where he could see straight through someone at a glance.
But Edogawa Ranpo was different.
Max level from the very start.
All it took was one look, and with that childlike gaze he could peel him apart completely, strip away every layer of concealment, and lay bare all the secrets hidden underneath. In the Bungou Stray Dogs world, he was the absolute pinnacle of intellect. To borrow a phrase from Danganronpa, this was someone who could perceive not only the cause of an event, but the cause of the cause itself, grasping the truth of deduction with unshakable certainty.
Stripping away the filter of "fictional character," Asou Akiya's reason told him this: I've been in this world for years already. No one can, without any evidence at all, see through me and determine that I'm a transmigrator.
The final layer of secrecy still remained intact.
What he truly had to face was whether Edogawa Ranpo would expose the fact that he had tricked a Frenchman.
Only this—only this one secret—could never be spoken aloud.
Edogawa Ranpo had no sense of restraint; he said whatever came to mind, without fear or filter, and his combat ability was disastrously low. If Asou Akiya didn't have his own moral bottom line, he would honestly have wanted to kill him on the spot.
In that instant, his state of mind perfectly overlapped with the mental breakdown of Fukuzawa Yukichi in the novel.
Just throw this guy into the sea and be done with it.
Asou Akiya forced down his panic at top speed, his eyes locking onto the Edogawa Ranpo running toward him.
The other looked to be a boy of thirteen or fourteen, his limbs slender, his hair messy, as though it hadn't been washed in two days. He wore old clothes that were nonetheless fairly clean and decent—not a detective's outfit. His trousers bore deep creases from having sat for a long time during travel, the toes of his shoes dusted with a thin layer of grime. The backpack slung over his shoulders was filled to about eighty percent, likely packed with soft clothing or basic daily necessities.
Judging by Chuuya's age and extrapolating from the original storyline—
At this point in time, Edogawa Ranpo was not yet fourteen years old and had not met Fukuzawa Yukichi, the man who would later save him.
During this period, Edogawa Ranpo's experiences could be further divided into stages: the first stage, arriving in Yokohama with nothing to his name; the second stage, enrolling in the police academy and beginning to come into contact with the complexity of human nature; the third stage, being expelled from the academy and left homeless, pitiful and alone; the fourth stage, trying to survive by taking on odd jobs, drifting in confusion; and the fifth stage, repeatedly failing at those jobs, getting fired, and coming to despise this "inexplicable world."
Asou Akiya recalled the bus routes nearby. The bus he himself had taken fit perfectly: ahead lay a transfer station where many long-distance buses originated from rural towns. One of the stops further along the route was Yokohama Police Academy, a bit of a distance from here—most likely Ranpo's intended destination.
The chill in his heart slowly dissipated. Drawing on the novel version of Bungō Stray Dogs, he pieced together the first-stage plot: thirteen-year-old Edogawa Ranpo, orphaned, with no relatives to rely on, suddenly remembered his father's words—if anything ever happened, he was to seek out an acquaintance who served as the principal of Yokohama Police Academy.
And so this muddle-headed Edogawa Ranpo had come running to Yokohama, accidentally gotten off at the wrong stop, and happened to spot someone who had been riding the same bus route as himself.
Thirteen-year-old Ranpo ✔
Just arrived in Yokohama, extremely poor at taking care of himself ✔
Knows nothing, can do nothing, only good at rambling nonsense like an overgrown toddler ✔
Has not yet been beaten down by society ✔
Easy to fool ✔
Asou Akiya reached these conclusions, brought his mental brainstorming to an end, and smiled at the boy—who stared back at him with clear, emerald-green eyes and looked ten thousand times more fragile and pitiable than himself—as he said, "Are you heading to school? I can take you there."
Hearing these abrupt, out-of-the-blue words, Edogawa Ranpo immediately brightened. "Yeah! Thanks, mister!"
Asou Akiya added, "In return, I'll save you the trouble of riding the bus and walking—but you're not allowed to talk about me in front of anyone else."
Edogawa Ranpo raised both hands in agreement and replied carelessly, "Even though you look pretty interesting, mister, like you're hiding something, I'm not interested in gossiping about your love life anyway."
The smile on Asou Akiya's face vanished.
No matter how much he guarded against things, he still couldn't guard against Ranpo passing by. As expected, he really couldn't afford to cling to wishful thinking!
Suppressing the urge to grab the boy and toss him straight into a trash bin, Asou Akiya waved at the roadside and hailed a taxi. Leaning in, he said to the driver, "Hello, we're going to Yokohama Police Academy."
Hearing that the destination was the police academy, the driver visibly relaxed and replied, "Alright, we'll be there in ten minutes."
During the ride, Edogawa Ranpo's mouth never stopped moving. He kept pointing excitedly out the window, barely managing to honor his promise not to talk about Asou Akiya in front of others.
"I want to eat that!"
"So many people are lining up—no wonder it's an old famous shop in Yokohama!"
"Mister, the city is way livelier than the countryside!"
He talked nonstop, while Asou Akiya stayed mostly quiet, occasionally responding a few times, somehow keeping up with the boy's completely illogical, jumpy train of thought—until, right in the middle of it all, the boy suddenly blurted out cheerfully, "Driver, mister, your wife is cheating on you!"
The screech of sudden braking rang out.
Asou Akiya and Edogawa Ranpo were promptly kicked out of the taxi, the driver refusing to continue the ride in a fury.
Asou Akiya felt a deep, wordless despair. "..."
Not even ten minutes!
You managed to offend a complete stranger!
Wiping his face in his heart, Asou Akiya reached out and tugged the stunned Ranpo along. "Let's go. It's not that far anyway—I'll just walk you there."
Edogawa Ranpo withdrew his gaze from the taxi driving away and asked blankly, "What's wrong with the driver, mister?"
Asou Akiya replied offhandedly, "He was just too happy."
Straying straight into a blind spot of common knowledge, Edogawa Ranpo wore an expression of pure, catlike confusion—a real 'confused cat.jpg' face.
Passing by a snack stall, Asou Akiya picked up a bag of purple sweet potato mochi for Ranpo without a second thought. As they walked, he explained evenly, "Not everyone reacts to the same thing in the same way. Some people actually derive pleasure from being NTR'd."
Edogawa Ranpo dropped a verbal bomb without hesitation. "Like you enjoy NTR?"
Asou Akiya's expression darkened for a split second. His smile stiffened, all skin and no warmth, as he replied, "If you don't want to eat it, give it back to me."
Ranpo immediately went into food-protection mode, stuffing the mochi into his mouth and complaining around it, "I want red bean mochi. I don't want plain mochi."
Asou Akiya said calmly, "They don't sell that."
Even if they did, I wouldn't give it to you.
You wasteful menace—someone who only eats the red bean filling and refuses to eat the mochi itself, yet insists on red bean mochi.
As if he could see straight through Asou Akiya's unspoken thoughts, Ranpo puffed out his cheeks and sulked. "Mochi isn't sweet."
Along the way, Asou Akiya kept buying snacks and feeding him, personally escorting the well-fed young boy to the gates of the police academy. He deliberately avoided the surveillance cameras and did not step inside—after all, as a member of the mafia, one had to maintain self-awareness and keep a healthy distance from the cops.
"Do you remember what I told you?" he asked.
"I remember," Ranpo replied.
This sort of reminder always made Edogawa Ranpo impatient almost instantly.
For the sake of his own survival, Asou Akiya did not dare to take the boy's answer at face value.
Who knew whether, once Ranpo's willful temperament flared up, he would still honor their agreement? Moreover, Asou Akiya suspected that Ranpo had not been lost at all; his lingering at the intersection had likely been nothing more than an attempt to observe the city itself.
Ranpo was like a half-finished product shaped by his parents' education—his understanding of human relations was exceedingly shallow, his sense of morality underdeveloped, and around his heart his two brilliant parents had erected a thick, transparent wall. If his parents were still alive, they could have slowly guided and corrected Ranpo's state of mind. But they were gone.
With a gentle smile, Asou Akiya raised his hand and rested it atop Edogawa Ranpo's head, speaking in the manner of a tender parent.
"Do you know why I'm not at ease?"
"…?"
"Because you're still a child—too foolish—and you need to listen to adults."
"..."
Edogawa Ranpo's pupils shifted slightly. His mind drifted, and he suddenly remembered his mother's oft-repeated refrain.
[Because you're still a child.]
[Because you're still a child.]
[Because you're still a child.]
Because, in his mother's words, he was still a child, he was not someone special; it was enough for him simply to live happily. When he encountered problems, he should listen to adults, for adults were beings far stronger than children.
The rebellious edge of Edogawa Ranpo's personality softened. "Mm."
The boy lifted his head to look at Asou Akiya, his gaze a pure mixture of innocence and the instinctive reverence a child holds toward adults.
Such a look would never appear on the face of the future Ranpo of the Armed Detective Agency.
Only a thirteen-year-old Edogawa Ranpo—torn without warning from the greenhouse of safety his parents had built for him and cast into the human world—could harbor such an absurd way of thinking.
— You are older than me, you are smarter than me, so what you say must be right.
— Adults always like to pretend to be foolish.
After his parents' deaths, Edogawa Ranpo had once been seized by profound panic. He discovered that the people outside were slightly different from what he had imagined, and at that moment, with his parents' explanations gone, flaws inevitably appeared in the logic of his thinking. He trusted his parents too deeply and refused to accept purely rational judgment, which caused extreme contradictions in his attitude toward others: on one hand, he was bewildered and fearful; on the other, he was excessively lively and brazen, deliberately testing adults.
The moment Asou Akiya met him, he deduced that Edogawa Ranpo had left his hometown and come to Yokohama in order to seek out an acquaintance at the police academy, and in doing so, he satisfied the covert "cat-paw" probing Ranpo had been carrying out.
No questions asked. The process skipped entirely.
"Are you going to a school? I'll take you there."
Those words were, in effect, an answer to Ranpo's unspoken test: [I know where you're going, I know why you approached me, I'll take you there—no need to say more.]
That single sentence became the guiding thread, and by imitating Ranpo's mother's habitual phrase, Asou Akiya struck the key that triggered a powerful psychological suggestion.
Silently, he added brick after brick to the mistaken cognition left behind by Ranpo's parents.
Edogawa Ranpo was thoroughly satisfied.
Once the mental defenses of the black-haired boy had been reinforced, he waved cheerfully at Asou Akiya and darted straight into the police academy. He was stopped at the entrance, explained that he was looking for an acquaintance of his father, and—no longer using his sharp tongue to provoke others—his deceptively harmless appearance allowed him to proceed through the normal channels with ease, quickly gaining an audience with the academy's principal.
Outside the school gates, watching him disappear inside, Asou Akiya lowered his eyes in an uneasy manner.
"This really is a genius," he murmured.
A strategist who, despite possessing no supernatural ability, had dared in the original story to face Nakahara Chuuya head-on, alone.
Edogawa Ranpo's intellect was itself akin to a supernatural power.
"But only when you are like this are you safe and controllable to me." Asou Akiya carefully reviewed every word and gesture he had used when dealing with Ranpo, confirming that he had successfully completed what felt like a full playthrough of a scripted game. Utterly exhausted, he erased his traces along the way as he returned.
Chuuya really was much cuter.
If he were going to raise a child, he would definitely not choose Ranpo—the kind of kid who could even tell you the color of the condoms you used.
Hearing the noise outside, Randou stepped out of the study. What he saw was Akiya sprawled out like a salted fish that had completely collapsed from exhaustion.
Randou crouched beside the sofa and looked at him, poking his cheek with a finger. "Did you walk a very long way?"
Asou Akiya replied weakly, "Yeah, I took a long detour." In order to eliminate all traces, he had walked back to the Port Mafia first, taken a shower, changed clothes, and then returned home through a concealed route.
He believed Ranpo could tell that he did not want to see him again.
And with Ranpo's proud and haughty nature, he would not humiliate himself by pressing the issue.
With lingering resentment, Asou Akiya complained, "I played a game with a very smart kid."
Randou asked with mild curiosity, "Was it fun?"
Asou Akiya stared blankly at the ceiling, his eyes hollow. "…Very thrilling…"
The world as seen through his eyes: [Everywhere I look, there are geniuses and ability users—except me.]
The world as seen through Ranpo's eyes: [Everyone has an IQ of 200. Every adult is smarter than me. I'm an idiot!]
Thanks to Ranpo, his own "IQ" today had probably shattered the extraordinary upper limit of three hundred, hadn't it?
Trash-talking felt great for a moment—who needs some Chu Colonel when I'm already better?
Excellent. Today, a special achievement had been unlocked: Standing at the very peak of ordinary humans.
Asou Akiya pulled Randou into his arms, a wave of delayed fear finally catching up to him. He took a deep breath of Randou's familiar scent, decisively refusing to inhale even a trace of Ranpo-cat ever again.
"Randou really smells the best~."
Once again, he was reminded just how important it was to meet the right person.
Thank you, Verlaine!