On the second day after finishing the novel, Ozaki Kouyou asked Asou Akiya, who was at work,
"May I give this novel to someone else?"
"Yes."
Having obtained Mr. Asou's permission, Ozaki Kouyou promptly passed Cinnabar Mole and Mosquito Blood on to Hazama Kan'ichi. She was a perceptive person; although her age limited the breadth of her experience, it did not limit her judgment of a novel. She hoped that she herself was not this so-called "mafia young lady," and that Hazama Kan'ichi was not the unambitious male protagonist of the story.
When Hazama Kan'ichi received Ozaki Kouyou's gift, he was delighted at first, but upon seeing the title of the novel, he was puzzled.
What did a cinnabar mole have to do with mosquito blood?
They were both red?
During his lunch break, Hazama Kan'ichi hugged the novel in one arm while eating, and from the opening chapters he roughly grasped the main storyline: it was about a kind-hearted male protagonist who successfully eloped with a reborn heroine.
The beginning was gripping and emotionally stirring, and Hazama Kan'ichi read with deep absorption. Yet as the story progressed, he realized that the male protagonist's presence gradually diminished, the narrative shifting from a romance-driven plot into one centered on career and ambition, devoting extensive passages to the heroine. This heroine far surpassed the male protagonist in excellence; her brilliance grew with each passing day. From a delicate mafia heiress, she matured, broke free from her family's constraints, stepped into the light, and transformed into a bold and commanding businesswoman of her era.
He had no objection to the heroine; on the contrary, he greatly admired such a woman. It was only when he reached the ending that the story suddenly became "plain."
The heroine left a banquet for business negotiations and returned home, where she looked at her husband.
Her husband was much older than she was, dressed in ordinary clothes; standing beside her in her evening gown, they seemed like people from two entirely different worlds.
She asked him, "Do you love me?"
Her husband replied, "If I did not love you, how could I have taken you away from that family?"
They had once undergone drastic upheavals together; they had eloped, been hunted down, and fortunately survived those dark days.
"Have you lost your feelings for me?" the husband—once the male protagonist—asked.
The heroine shook her head and, following Japanese custom, knelt formally before him. She would forever be his wife and would never forget what he had given for her sake.
"This humble wife would never dare to forget."
It was not that her feelings were gone.
Rather—she was weary of loving, and the obsession of bygone days had come to outweigh everything else.
That single line, spoken in a woman's voice, seemed to travel from the world of the novel straight into Hazama Kan'ichi's ears; it sounded uncannily like Ozaki Kouyou's voice after she had matured. Hazama Kan'ichi's hand trembled, and for reasons he could not explain, he found himself projecting his own emotions into the scene; his nose stung with sudden tears. Adults understood this, did they not? The male and female protagonists in the novel loved each other, but love was not the entirety of life!
"Is it because he isn't outstanding enough?" Hazama Kan'ichi murmured to himself. "Yes, the light around him is fading bit by bit; he no longer matches the heroine, and later on… his sense of presence grows so thin it is like air."
At the very beginning, the male protagonist had been so hot-blooded and impulsive, clutching the heroine's hand as they fled from the mafia family together.
That scene had moved the heroine for countless years.
Given a second life, the heroine chose to seize the male protagonist's hand tightly, to prevent the car accident, and thus achieved a happy ending; yet when measured against the countless outstanding individuals around her, the love that had spanned two lifetimes was nonetheless withering away.
"What are you thinking about? You're so absorbed." Hazama Kan'ichi's colleague, seated across from him, asked.
"I'm reading a novel," Hazama Kan'ichi replied with a bitter smile as he glanced at the portion of his meal he had not yet finished. "A novel that appears to have a happy ending but is in fact a tragic one. The heroine ends up with the male protagonist, yet the love in her heart has withered."
His colleague, upon hearing this, immediately grew curious and gossipy. "I'd guess it's emotional infidelity."
"No," Hazama Kan'ichi said.
His colleague responded skeptically, "Well, that's why it's a novel. In real life, who can keep romantic love alive for an entire lifetime? After that, it just turns into familial affection, and you go on living together."
Hazama Kan'ichi retorted unhappily, "Love should definitely last a lifetime."
His colleague rolled his eyes at him, picked up his finished tray, and walked away. "I'm married, you know. I understand these things better than you."
Hazama Kan'ichi, twenty-four years old and single, a member of the Intelligence Division, sank into dejection.
Life truly was a gathering place for negative energy.
"Did he read it?"
Asou Akiya never sought to restrain Ozaki Kouyou's actions. At headquarters, he would even prepare snacks and reading material for her, so that the little girl assigned to guard him at close quarters gradually came to enjoy what was, for her, the most relaxed and free job she had ever had.
No need to infiltrate, no need to disguise herself… no need to kill!
Ozaki Kouyou picked up a detective novel, doing her best to understand its contents. "Mm. He told me he liked it quite a lot."
Asou Akiya smiled. "Do you believe that? The ending of that novel is a blow to men."
"I believe he will change," Ozaki Kouyou said steadily as she looked at him, her rose-red eyes bearing pupils shaped almost like diamonds. "Because the things I dislike, he is able to understand as well."
Asou Akiya sincerely admired those eyes.
From small signs one could see the greater whole; one's appearance was born of one's heart. On the young girl's still-childish figure, traces of the future could already be seen everywhere. It was not difficult to imagine what a stunning beauty Ozaki Kouyou would become at twenty-six years of age.
Unfortunately, the world of Bungou Stray Dogs was full of single men.
Those who had experienced love either had wives who had gone mad, were entangled in sibling romances, or were trapped in one-sided infatuations.
"Thank you."
The gratitude seemed to come out of nowhere.
Yet as the "Port Mafia Analyst," Asou Akiya understood it. There was only one reason she would thank him: Ozaki Kouyou had carefully investigated the novel's publisher and the author who went by the name "Reader."
The Stewed Pigeon Publishing House, under the name of the Port Mafia—once that was uncovered, the author's true identity immediately surfaced.
—Asou Akiya.
"People who take things too seriously live more painfully than others," Asou Akiya said, rubbing the callus formed on his finger from writing.
"Someone who finishes a novel in a week just to use it as a metaphor for other people is working harder than I am, isn't he?" Ozaki Kouyou accepted his goodwill as though it were natural and exposed him without holding back. "Mr. Analyst, you enjoy observing others far too much. Leave people a little privacy, or one day you'll be dragged into a sack and beaten to death."
Asou Akiya replied shamelessly, "I merely had a sudden burst of inspiration."
Ozaki Kouyou pressed her lips together. "So you think so little of me."
Asou Akiya sighed. "You're still a child. You're about the same age as the troublesome brat in my family. At your age, making friends is far better than falling in love."
Perhaps it was because he was an adult; adults always seemed to want to preserve a fragment of childhood for the children they cherished.
Ozaki Kouyou cast him a glance that could only be described as alluring, innocence and seduction coexisting in a single look.
"You think I'm a child?"
"When you begin to feel nostalgia for the past," he replied, "that is when you can truly be called an adult."
Only children are eager to grow up.
Asou Akiya picked up his briefcase, ready to head out, and hooked a finger through his car keys, letting them dangle. "Field assignment. Are you coming? I need to make a trip to an antique auction company under the Port Mafia's name."
Without hesitation, Ozaki Kouyou drew the long sword from behind her waist and said coolly, "To kill someone?"
Asou Akiya was speechless. As he passed by her, his fingers swiftly brushed through her red hair; after knowing her for so long, this was the first opportunity he had had to stroke this big-sister "cat."
"No killing."
Ozaki Kouyou felt something extra atop her head.
She reached up to touch it. What she found was a fluffy, soft-textured floral hairpin.
Before getting into the car, she kept glancing at herself in the rearview mirror, utterly defenseless against anything cute.
"Is this a gift?"
Asou Akiya smiled. "No. It's an adult teaching you how to avoid the temptations of other adults. I bought it yesterday at a convenience store during a discount sale. The price was excellent, and the cherry-blossom pink suits your hair color perfectly."
Ozaki Kouyou: "..."
Asou Akiya took out an even fluffier pair of earmuffs from the storage compartment inside the car, something well suited to the current season.
"Do you like them? My lover absolutely adores these."
He let her look at them for a moment, and under her expectant gaze—
mercilessly took them back.
Not for you.
They belonged to Randou.
A vein throbbed on Ozaki Kouyou's forehead, and she turned her head to look out at the scenery.
Asou Akiya said, "Only things given by someone truly important are precious. Don't be deceived by cheap trifles. You have more than enough time to see clearly what a person is really like."
Ozaki Kouyou was not an easily bullied little girl; she replied coldly, "Filthy adult."
Asou Akiya shamelessly declared, "I am wholly devoted to my dearest at home. Even the Boss couldn't tear us apart. Don't even think about trying to seduce me."
Ozaki Kouyou flushed bright red. Who would ever try to seduce you!
You bastard with nothing but your wife on your mind!
The auction company under the Port Mafia generally handled smuggled antiques or matters such as money laundering. Asou Akiya was no stranger to this and had attended once or twice before.
There was only one reason he would deliberately brave the winter cold outside instead of staying cozily in his office.
To buy a villa.
One of the auction's managers said, "Mr. Asou, you asked us to keep an eye out for villa-style properties, but to be honest, I would not recommend that you focus on large estates that have failed to sell multiple times. Generally speaking, they tend to come with many historical issues."
Asou Akiya flipped through the auction catalog and said with a smile, "I'm mainly just curious."
Suddenly, he pointed to one of the lots that included a partial photograph—an expansive European-style manor, covering an area of 1,494 tsubo, a Japanese unit of measurement, which in total amounted to nearly five thousand square meters.
"This is up for auction again?"
"Ah, you've heard of its reputation as well? The last auction was three years ago. The wealthy man who spent a fortune to purchase it intended to renovate the property into his private holiday villa. However, his company went bankrupt recently, which led to the mortgaging of his assets… Yokohama has quite a number of foreign tycoons, so perhaps he came here hoping to try his luck."
"Mm… Bankruptcy? It seems that each of this manor's previous owners has been on a downward trajectory?"
Asou Akiya teased the manager lightly. The manager gave an awkward smile, assuming that the other party would not actually purchase something so expensive, and decided to speak frankly.
"The feng shui of this place isn't very good. There have been fatalities in the past. If it weren't for its certain historical associations, and for the fact that it houses some antique items from when Karasuma Renya was still alive, it really wouldn't be worth this price."
Asou Akiya let his gaze rest on the description page for a few seconds before turning it.
—The Sunset Manor.
Its most famous owner had been Karasuma Renya, one of Japan's top magnates in the last century.
Later, after Karasuma Renya's death, the Karasuma family declined, and this ancestral estate of commemorative significance entered the auction market. It changed hands multiple times; those without power or influence truly did not dare to covet such a property.
After all, even twelve years later it had failed to sell several times and still remained exorbitantly expensive…
Every year, Asou Akiya could not help but sneak a few extra glances at it, only to feel the sting of his empty wallet; inwardly, he wanted to pound the wall. This was the "Sunset Manor"! One of the greatest fortunes in the world of Detective Conan! Hidden within the entire manor were hundreds of tons of gold!
Gold appreciates in value!
Forget the goal of ten billion U.S. dollars to become a sub-executive.
With this, Asou Akiya could simply buy the entire Port Mafia!
Could I use money to purchase from France the lifelong leasing rights to a transcendent being? Asou Akiya suppressed his excitement without letting it show. In the past, he had lacked the funds to buy it; now that he finally had the money, he instead hesitated, not daring to lay a hand on this treasure located in Nagano Prefecture on Japan's Honshu Island.
Take a gamble—turn a seaside villa into a house of gold!
No.
Grow a little stronger first…
Strong enough to purchase Sunset Manor, to deal with those who knew its secrets, and yet not be secretly targeted by certain forces.
One of a man's ultimate ambitions is to own a golden house to hide his beloved within!
...
Randou was out on a mission in the biting winter wind when he suddenly shivered. That familiar chill—so sharp it made his scalp tingle—crept over him once again.
[Who is thinking about me?]
[Akiya? Impossible. He's been so well-behaved lately, abstaining and cultivating his health for the sake of self-restraint.]
[Ahhh, I can't wait for three months to pass.]
Amid the combat squad, Randou's face quietly flushed beneath his scarf. His body feared the cold, but his heart burned warmly.
A life filled with daily anticipation was indeed exhilarating.
Next year, they would be moving to a new villa.