Chapter 19
[I know your secret, ghost of Scotch.]
The signature was a string of numbers.
A rapid, suppressed breathing echoed in Fan An’s mind. She imagined that Hiro’s expression must be awful right now.
Panic, pain, and guilt. And when he snapped out of it, his first words would probably be “I’m sorry, I got you involved in this” again.
Such a gentle person, living such a hard life.
Fan An silently picked up the letter that had been pinned under the bottle of Scotch whisky. She examined it front and back, and after confirming it was just an ordinary piece of paper, she folded it and stuffed it into her pocket.
Then, Fan An dialed the hotel’s front desk.
“I’d like to change rooms,” she said. “The late-night fortune-telling show said that my current room number is a bad omen for my zodiac sign. It’s too unlucky.”
The entertainment industry was always very superstitious. The front desk staff had seen it all and, without asking any more questions, helped Fan An process the room change and sent up a new key card.
The dark-haired girl, holding her suitcase in one hand, took the key card. She gestured with her chin towards the coffee table. “Please take care of this for me.”
“A gift from a skulking coward. It’s bad luck.”
…
Fan An closed the door to her new room. She put down her suitcase and drew the curtains tight.
The letter was taken out again. Fan An used her fingernail to draw a line under “ghost of Scotch.”
“This person says he knows our secret,” she said, not speaking aloud, but communicating directly with Hiromitsu in her mind.
“He knows jack shit,” Fan An said unceremoniously.
“If he’s so capable, he should have written the full name of my ability in the threatening letter,” she sneered. “Even Edogawa Ranpo couldn’t do that.”
Dazai Osamu couldn’t do it. The demon Fyodor couldn’t do it either. You bunch of literary youths with ability names like [No Longer Human] and [Crime and Punishment] could grow eight hundred more brain cells and you still wouldn’t guess the true name of [My Respected Crime Mentor]!
In the realm of the abstract, Fan An was unbeatable.
“If he doesn’t know my ability, he can’t possibly know about your resurrection,” the girl said, pointing at the word “ghost” on the letter.
“Think about it. If the letter had said, ‘I know you’re still alive, Scotch,’ wouldn’t the threat have been more effective?”
That makes sense. Hiromitsu calmed down. What An’an said made a lot of sense.
The sender had been deliberately mysterious in the letter, which meant he didn’t actually know much of the inside story.
—The threatening letter and the bottle of Scotch whisky were the sender’s test, a psychological tactic to apply pressure and make him lose his composure!
The original room was probably bugged and had hidden cameras. Hiromitsu closed his eyes.
The girl’s impromptu performance had been flawless. She had handled everything perfectly.
“Thank you,” Hiromitsu said in a low voice. “You’ve been taking care of me all this time.”
“You’re too polite, Hiro,” the dark-haired girl said, waving her hand dismissively. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”
The urgent task now was to find the person who had sent the threatening letter.
Fan An didn’t know much about the former organization her Crime Mentor had served. She only knew Silver-Haired Model Bro and Sunglasses Bodyguard Bro.
“The person who sent the letter can’t be Gin,” Hiromitsu denied at once. “He would just come straight at you.” The number one brother of the distillery didn’t bother with such roundabout schemes.
It couldn’t be Vodka either. The act of placing a threatening letter under a bottle of Scotch whisky was too literary. Vodka didn’t have that kind of artistic cell in his body.
“It’s not Gin, and it seems he hasn’t told Gin about this,” Hiromitsu stared at the numbers at the bottom of the letter. “Instead, he left a contact number, giving room for negotiation…”
A guess formed in his mind.
“An’an,” Hiromitsu sought the girl’s opinion, “under what circumstances would you deliberately obstruct a colleague from completing his work?”
The distillery’s number one workhorse hated only one thing in his life: undercover agents. He deeply hated that he couldn’t kill every undercover agent in the world. Everyone in the organization knew his… preference. As long as a mole was discovered, the first thing anyone would do was summon Gin, respectfully making way for the big brother: “One mole, Aniki, you kill first.”
In a sense, Gin was the beloved pet of the distillery.
“But he’s not universally loved,” Mentor Scotch explained the complex grudges and feuds of the distillery to An’an. “There are also people who despise Gin, hate Gin with a passion, are extremely jealous of Gin, and whose feelings for Gin are twisted and deformed.”
Fan An: Isn’t that just being deep in the closet?
Hating him on one hand, yet being abnormally focused on him on the other, wishing you could glue your eyeballs to him, meddling in everything he does, constantly flaunting your own existence in front of him—without a doubt, deep in the closet!
Hiromitsu: Uh, actually, they just have a simple workplace rivalry…
Fan An: Deep in the closet. So gay.
Hiromitsu chose to give up.
Just as the girl insisted on calling Gin and Vodka “Silver-Haired Model Bro” and “Sunglasses Bodyguard Bro,” Scotch Whisky fought with all his might but could not overcome Fan An’s stubbornness. Pinga was honored with the new name “Twisted Deep-Closet Bro.”
Hiromitsu: I’m sorry. I did my best. Pinga, you just didn’t live up to expectations.
On the bright side, at least he’s in the “Bro” category.
“Pinga is Rum’s subordinate. He has always seen Gin as the biggest obstacle to his promotion and has been trying to step on Gin to climb up,” Hiromitsu told Fan An.
“But because most people think Pinga is just punching way above his weight, his approval rating in the organization isn’t high.”
What’s Silver-Haired Model Bro’s caliber? The distillery only had a few presentable members. How could Pinga possibly shake Gin’s top-tier popularity?
Vodka would defend Aniki’s top-star life to the death!
“That makes sense,” Fan An said, clapping her hands. She understood everything now.
In the battle at the abandoned distillery, Gin was shot in the shoulder by Hiromitsu’s bullet. He recognized Scotch Whisky’s marksmanship.
The ghost of Scotch was haunting the distillery. The naturally suspicious Gin decided to investigate thoroughly.
Director Matsuzaka’s suicidal act had given Gin a list of the living people who had been at the abandoned distillery that day. He and Vodka had spent the night silencing them. Only Fan An, who had been out working a part-time job late at night, had luckily escaped and survived.
Gin couldn’t find any trace of Hiromitsu. The ability’s space didn’t exist in the physical world. But Gin was a persistent man, a terrifying paranoiac, an incurable hypochondriac.
He was still investigating, using the power of the Black Organization to continue his search. Gin’s actions had alerted his twisted deep-closet rival—Pinga.
Wherever there was Gin, there was Pinga. Pinga clung to Gin like a ghost, constantly crawling in the shadows: Hehe… I’ll step on you, and the position of the distillery’s big brother will be mine, hehe… I’ll watch you forever, forever and ever…
Normal workplace rivalry: Gossiping, snitching, stabbing voodoo dolls.
Distillery workplace rivalry: TATAKAE! TATAKAE! TATAKAE!
(T/N: “Tatakae” means “fight” in Japanese, a famous line from “Attack on Titan.”)
His intense rivalry with Gin dominated Pinga’s actions. He also secretly began to investigate the “Ghost of Scotch” incident.
Fan An was the sole survivor of this case. Pinga saw her as a breakthrough.
“So he followed me to Nagano Prefecture,” Fan An said.
The spying eyes in the darkness last night belonged to Pinga.
“He didn’t show up for the first few days. He was probably looking for you,” the girl shrugged.
Unfortunately, Hiromitsu had been staying in Fan An’s ability space the whole time. Pinga could have dug three feet into the hotel and still not found him.
Until last night, when Pinga saw the disguised Hiromitsu.
A young man carrying a bass guitar case, a skilled sniper, appearing and disappearing like a ghost, and very close to the sole survivor of the abandoned distillery case—there was no mistake, this was the person Gin was looking for!
A jolt of excitement shot up Pinga’s spine. The joy of being one step ahead of Gin made his fingertips tremble slightly.
Pinga didn’t believe in resurrection. The face in his vision was not Scotch Whisky’s. It was clearly a stranger.
A stranger who had shot Gin and seemed to have a grudge against him.
As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. This person had shot Gin. Pinga’s initial favorability towards him skyrocketed.
Pinga: As long as you hate Gin, we are brothers from different mothers.
He was sick of this world where Gin was the beloved pet. The Black Organization had so many people, yet it seemed like only Gin and the undercover agents were doing any work. The real liquor members who honestly clocked in and out had no presence at all.
Those undercover agents were more competitive than the last. Pinga thought, It’s one thing to not be able to compete with the moles. Their pursuit of KPIs is terrifying. I can’t compete.
But Gin—the truest of the true liquor—is also fcking competitive! More competitive than the moles! He’s making the moles compete with him! He’s turned the entire distillery into a washing machine!*
The fake washing machine: Kudo Shinichi
(T/N: His name sounds like “laundry machine” in Japanese.)
The real washing machine: The distillery’s number one brother
Pinga: Compete my ass. (clenches fist.jpg)
Damn workplace scab! You think I’ll give up so easily? Never!
“Finally—I’m finally one step ahead of Gin,” Pinga paced back and forth excitedly.
He would absolutely not tell Gin about Hiromitsu’s whereabouts. This was his achievement. Pinga would use this to deal a heavy blow to Gin.
After some thought, Pinga spread out a piece of paper.
[Found you, Scotch’s copycat.]
“Gin’s imagination is so lacking,” Pinga said dismissively. “Compared to resurrection, a copycat crime is a much more logical answer.”
The tip of his pen paused on the paper. Pinga thought for a moment, then crumpled up the paper and rephrased it.
[I know your secret, ghost of Scotch.]
If the other party is someone close to Scotch, perhaps they will reveal more under pressure.
During the day, Pinga snuck into the hotel room. He placed the letter on the coffee table and put an unopened bottle of Scotch whisky on top of it.
The man with cornrows left a bug and a hidden camera in the room and left without a sound.
The camera was aimed at the door. A few hours later, the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl pushed the door open alone. Her gaze fell on the coffee table.
…
“Pinga left his contact information.”
Hiromitsu silently read the numbers on the paper.
Pinga’s attitude was clear. This was a recruitment offer.
Work for him, or be killed by him.
“Pinga,” Hiromitsu whispered the man’s codename, his hand slowly moving to the bass case.
The zipper gradually opened, revealing the cold, slender body of the gun inside.
“It hasn’t come to that!”
Fan An quickly pressed down on the Crime Mentor’s killing intent. “Things aren’t that bad yet.”
Although she had never met Twisted Deep-Closet Bro in person, from Scotch’s description, he was less troublesome than Silver-Haired Model Bro.
Twisted Deep-Closet Bro and Silver-Haired Model Bro had an irreconcilable conflict. Fan An believed this was Hiromitsu’s opportunity!
“Instead of breaking up this family, why not try to join them?”
Running away is not the solution. One must face their problems head-on.
“I have a plan,” the dark-haired girl said, pushing up a pair of glasses she had found from somewhere. The lenses glinted with the light of wisdom.
“Hiro,” she said mysteriously. “Have you ever heard of ‘body-double literature’?”