...Hmm?
What
is this?
I never noticed this tiny little Fragment...
Sometimes a Fragment gets cracked and it breaks.
Just like how the fate we believe in cracks sometimes.
A damaged fate is no longer the same fate it was.
Then which fate does this piece belong to?
I picked up the tiny Fragment
and tried to match it with the Fragments I have in my hand.
And the last Fragment I picked up was
the Himatsubushi Fragment.
This Fragment was distorted from the beginning.
And look
...
...
...
...
see?
This tiny piece fits perfectly.
With this tiny Fragment,
how will the world change?
What kind of miracle will occur?
The whole world warped.
...Since I put the broken piece back where it belonged, the distortion centered on the crack.
But that doesn't mean I can't take a peek inside.
It's already past 1985.
It's a time long after Rika Furude and her friends' stories tragically ended in June 1983.
Beep, zzzk!
With some mild interference, an order crackled through their headsets.
"All units,
the chief has a message for all of you, so listen up!"
"Good work, everyone!
The local police have given us fifteen minutes to wrap this up, but I'm only giving you a few seconds!!
Don't let a single person escape!!
The main target is a diplomat.
Don't let him suspect you're a cop. Just grab him!
But make sure you leave no injuries!
It'll lead to problems if you do!"
"They're dirtbags who hide under diplomatic immunity to deal with the local gangsters.
They launder money from drug dealing and force people into the sex trade to pay off high interest debts.
According to the local embassy, some of the victims are younger than teenagers."
"...Shitbags."
Normally, this would be a simple case, what with the perpetrators being gangsters.
But when the police found out that a foreign diplomat was involved, things got much more complicated all of a sudden.
Diplomats have diplomatic immunity, so the police can't arrest them.
But they knew he was an important figure in the whole scheme, and there was no doubt that he was the middleman between the foreign criminal organization and the Japanese gangsters.
They couldn't let him escape.
It'd be easy to deport him, but that wouldn't solve anything.
The police had asked the embassy for assistance, but they denied the request.
And the case was put on a standstill at that point.
That's when they found out that the organization was going to be selling the Self Defense Force's classified radar and missile technology secrets.
The Public Safety Division then had to move on the premise to protect this classified government information.
And today was the day that operation was set to go...
"Two men at the front stairs.
Two men at the underground entrance.
Four men at the back door.
All suspects are believed to be armed."
"Two more than usual, huh?"
"It'll only take two seconds more for him.
...He never shows anyone mercy."
"Can you hear, Akasaka?
You're on point.
Be careful!
Okay, let's move!!"
"This is Akasaka. I copy.
Let's go."
A man suddenly appeared around the corner downtown. It was Akasaka.
He displayed none of the naivete that he did when he first met Rika.
When he got to the entrance of the underground club, a bouncer with a heavy foreign accent stopped him.
"This place,
members only.
Do you
have membership card?"
"........."
Akasaka pulled a card out after being asked.
It was a card that was very difficult to forge, so they could only get one.
As the man on point, he was the one to receive it.
The bouncer let Akasaka in after confirming he had a membership card.
"Akasaka-san passed the bouncer at the entrance.
He's going down the stairs."
"Come on, Akasaka..."
At the bottom of the staircase, there was an overly-decorated door like the ones you'd see at a high-class club.
The venomous glow of the cocktail lights lit it up, silently warning everyone it was an entrance to a den of evil.
"Welcome.
May I see your membership card?"
"............"
The guard at the entrance took the membership card and put it through the card reader on the wall.
Beep!
An error sound.
Slight perspiration could be seen on Akasaka's forehead.
The guard swiped the card a couple of times more.
Beep.
Beep.
"...Akasaka-san is having a problem..."
"Did they change the system...?!
...If Akasaka's encountering trouble, we'll change plans.
Secure his safety pronto..."
The expression on the guard with him steadily grew dour.
His right hand reached inside of his jacket... probably fingering his gun.
...Ding.
The buzzer suddenly rang with a delightful tone, and the card reader flashed a green light.
Immediately after that, the lock on the door opened up.
"Thank you for waiting.
Please head on inside."
The guard pulled his hand out of his jacket and opened up the heavy door.
Loud music and flashing colorful lights spilled out from the inside.
From within that, a well-dressed guard appeared to welcome Akasaka.
...At this moment, his first mission was accomplished.
Having acted as the go signal for the remaining units, Akasaka was also in the dangerous position of being in enemy territory all by himself.
The door was the biggest obstacle for their ambush.
The door locked automatically, so whenever it was closed, it was also sealed that way.
It was a solid door, and nearly impossible to open from the outside.
Somebody had to not only open that door, but keep it open for several seconds in order for the raid to begin.
Akasaka was the only one who could do that.
"......Akasaka.
Entrance secured."
"Commence operation!!!"
The complex on the other side of the club was getting a new tenant, and there were two trucks parked in front of the building.
But of course, that was just a disguise.
The door to one of the trucks opened, and several dozen plainclothes investigators jumped out!!
The same thing was happening at the back door, too.
The ground level guards noticed this and began to draw their guns, but were taken down immediately by nearby investigators who had been pretending to be innocent bystanders.
Several dozen investigators quietly went down the underground stairs.
These narrow underground stairs were another obstacle to their operation.
Everything would end up on the security camera.
Their raid would become known within a few seconds.
For that matter, a push on the security button would make it impossible for the lock to be opened from the outside.
That's why they had to secure the door before the ambush.
The guards on both sides of Akasaka noticed the loud footsteps coming down the stairs.
The well-dressed guard also realized that something was wrong.
The three guards shifted their attention from Akasaka to the stairs behind him.
And as he sensed that attention shift...
Akasaka took a quick, deep breath, and then stopped breathing entirely.
The two guards standing beside him suddenly rose into the air in strange positions.
Akasaka had determined his position relative to the two guards next to him.
So he didn't need to check with his eyes.
...But even so!
His fists had been driven into their faces with such precise accuracy.
His moves were well-trained ones, and showed no mercy against evil. They were as destructive as armor-piercing ammunition.
And furthermore, Akasaka had retracted his arms at the same speed he struck...!!
Everything looked so strange in the flashing lights...!
The man who witnessed all this probably couldn't figure out what had just happened.
The two guards were up in the air in strange positions and the man who had been standing in front of him was now crouching low.
Then that frozen moment shattered!!
The well-dressed guard was smashed into the ceiling, and shortly afterward came crashing down onto the floor!
Later on, while slurping liquid food, he would desperately try to remember whether it was a fist or a leg that broke his jaw.
He would probably never quite recall it!!
Rather luckily, the way his body fell blocked the door, so Akasaka didn't have to hold it open any longer.
"...This is Akasaka. I'm going in."
"W-Wait!!
Wait for your backup!!
Akasaka!!!"
The room was filled with loud music, but everyone had already noticed the brouhaha at the entrance.
"Everyone, GET DOWN!!!"
As soon as Akasaka bellowed his warning, screams filled the club.
Most people immediately hit the floor as if trying to proclaim their innocence.
But all the guards reacted quickly to Akasaka.
In the midst of all this, there were a few people who were trying to make their escape through the back alongside several guards.
Akasaka restarted his breathing once and then stopped it again... and then ran after them like a wolf!!
He jumped up onto the table, smashing expensive bottles of alcohol and scattering glasses with ice cubes made from the icebergs of the Arctic.
A foreign bodyguard, whose previous profession must've been a professional boxer, thoughtlessly stood in front of Akasaka.
With a heavy accent, he tried to taunt his opponent.
But Akasaka couldn't have cared less about that.
The only display that man was able to put on for him was that he was able to block Akasaka's attack.
But it wasn't even an effective guard!!
The power of Akasaka's punches were so incredible that they simply broke the man's bones in his attempt to block them!!
The man's arm warped in a strange way, and the moment after the agony showed on his face, Akasaka's left arm ground into it!!
Akasaka, you see, is right-handed.
That man should consider himself grateful
that he was able to get away with a mere orbital fracture!!
Thinking that this was his chance, another man attempted to tackle Akasaka-san from behind.
He assumed that no matter how strong a man was, he'd go down quickly when attacked from behind.
He also assumed that as Akasaka was concentrating in front of him, he wouldn't be expecting an attack from behind to begin with.
But that would only be true if Akasaka was just concentrating on his front.
...Indeed, the attacker was very wrong, for Akasaka was no longer even thinking about the man before him!!!
Akasaka knew exactly when and what was about to happen.
The experience he has built up to this day taught him that.
His body, more than his mind, remembered the timing for when menaces to society like these would make their move from behind him.
Akasaka's attack continued fluidly from the left-arm punch that he struck against the ex-boxer.
His left arm retracted, and at the same time, he arced his left leg around beautifully as it crashed into the man approaching him from behind.
A dull sound signified that his nose had been broken.
...But Akasaka already knew that!
Akasaka continued his motion and directed a decisive right blow to the side of his assailant's head.
The man slammed into the wall
and bounced off of it, rolling on the floor.
Akasaka took another breath.
Under the glare of the dazzling club lights, the guards realized they were up against a demon.
Yes, they realized that there was no way to take him down!!
The guards were being paid to deal with humans.
Fighting demons just wasn't in their job description!!!
At that moment, backup finally arrived.
Maybe "finally" isn't a suitable word.
Everything that happened did so over a matter of seconds.
The time it took for Akasaka to take down those five guards was a span of merely two breaths.
"Put your hands above your head and get down on the floor!!
If you resist, we will open fire!!"
Thanks to Akasaka's furious action, the flow of events was already set.
Akasaka's intimidating first strike shattered the gang leaders' will to run. They were all down on the floor but one of them began smiling.
"You shouldn't touch me!
It'll lead to an international incident!!"
Akasaka grabbed him by the collar and threw him against the concrete wall.
"A-Aren't you a policeman?
I have diplomatic immunity!!
I am a diplomat!!"
"Good for you.
So how much did you get paid, huh?"
"This will be an international incident!!
I will be calling the embas-
Ohhahhhhhhhh!!!!"
With a dragon-like roar, Akasaka's right fist pounded the wall right next to the diplomat's head!
Immediately after that, his left fist pounded the wall on the other side of that head, and soon enough Akasaka had pounded the wall seven times, each just a sliver away from the diplomat!!
His fists were easily powerful enough to crush the man's head!
The diplomat crumbled to the floor.
"Haa...haahhh..."
"This is Akasaka.
Target secured."
Further investigations discovered a secret getaway route that even Public Safety didn't know about.
Dozens of Soviet military-grade machine guns were found, and if Akasaka hadn't stopped them there in the club, they would have escaped, or even worse, the operation might have ended with a brutal death toll on both sides.
All thanks to how well Akasaka executed his duty, the operation was completed without a single shot fired.
"...Come on,
hurry!!
The local police will be here soon.
Put them on the truck!!"
Since the foreign diplomat was involved,
they had to make sure it didn't look as though the whole operation was carried out by the police.
Instead, it was made to look like a simple gang war.
They would dump the useless gang members, and hand over the target to the police.
Of course, before handing him over, they'd make sure he spilled everything he knew.
That diplomatic pig would be used as a negotiation device by another part of Public Safety.
They found plenty of evidence that said pig was tied to an underground criminal organization.
Not wanting a persona non grata on their hands, the embassy would likely cut all ties with him. The rest would be the business of other departments.
Public Safety's job was to take care of the things regular police couldn't deal with.
"Akasaka, are you okay?
Come in, Akasaka!!"
"This is Akasaka.
We're on our way."
"You've done it again...!
Report to the chief to get reamed out later!"
"Akasaka-san, you sure are a demon.
Five men within mere seconds!?"
"That's not even karate anymore!
Your fists should be recategorized as lethal weapons..."
"It sure was lucky that none of them drew their guns, though.
Knowing how brutal Akasaka-san is,
he could have turned them into honeycombs."
"Shut up,
don't make me sound like an assassin.
I show no mercy against evil, that's all."
The pigs he had just caught were no average criminals. They had committed so many unforgivable sins.
The strength behind Akasaka's fists was proportional to those sins.
The heavier their sins, the more powerful his blows would be.
"Come on, round them up!!
Akasaka, make them hurry!!
The local police will get here quickly!!"
"This is Akasaka. Understood.
Didn't you guys hear? Hurry up."
"R-Roger!
Ah, Command, we have five injured here!
Please have meds ready!"
There wasn't any trace left of Akasaka's old naivete.
He had grown to be the vigilant ace of his department.
Akasaka was training inside a dark dojo filled with the smell of sweat and mold.
The dojo was located in the middle of downtown, in a small building. It wasn't that big, and they weren't that well equipped, either.
It certainly didn't look like a dojo where a person as skilled as Akasaka would train.
There were only three or four students there, including Akasaka.
...But this was the dojo he picked.
To Akasaka, karate was certainly a weapon for crushing his enemies... but now he was seeking something further from it.
To achieve his goal, a dojo with many young students having actual physical lessons wouldn't work.
He had gone to so many different dojos and this was the one he finally settled on.
Every time Akasaka punched a sandbag, the heavy thud of his punch and the clang of the sandbag's chain would echo.
He wasn't just punching blindly.
He thought first, developed those thoughts, and then...
Punch!
It was more of a deep and low vibration than a proper sound.
Drops of sweat scattered, and the dust welled up in the air.
It was a perfect blow embodying the concept of "one strike, one kill".
But he wasn't satisfied.
He closed his eyes, controlled his breathing as if trying to hear the cry of cicadas,
then he punched again.
From a beginner's perspective, it looked like he was taking breaks between each.
...The other students training on their own would glance over and sense a fearsome respect at his focused blows.
"I heard Akasaka-san works at the police department."
"Really?
If someone like him is a police officer, I don't want to do anything bad..."
"Still... his concentration sure is amazing.
He never gets tired."
On his days off, Akasaka came to the dojo in the early morning.
And he silently trained all day.
His training was no longer physical, but mental.
The other students were already aware that his continuous concentration was the secret of his strength.
However, that was easier said than done.
...As long as a person lives, they are bound by countless ties and idle thoughts.
For a person to submit all his will into such singular focus is more like trying to attain enlightenment than something in the realm of martial arts.
Man has tried many different methods to achieve such enlightenment.
...And what we've learned is that there is no one way to reach it.
...And a path one takes
can reach it, if mastered.
Karate is what Akasaka chose.
"The rumors say
that his wife is dead.
Supposedly, he does karate to forget about that."
"Really?
That's different from what I heard.
I heard he couldn't save a girl on the job, leading him to realize his weaknesses, or something like that..."
"...Hey, I can hear you.
Quit talking about other people and train."
"""Yes, sir!!"""
There was a small beeping noise.
Somebody's watch was letting them know it was noon.
"Akasaka-san, we're going to get some lunch.
Can we get you something too?"
"......Sure.
I don't care what you get.
Thanks."
Akasaka was more pleased to be alone in the dojo than to have anyone bring him lunch.
When they left, silence filled the building.
"...Shit.
My focus dissipated because they were talking about me."
But if that happened because of that bit of small talk, that meant he had much more training to do.
He had to train much harder if he wanted to achieve enlightenment.
He focused again and started to punch the sandbag, but the sound was a lot lighter than before, and obviously the strength in his fists was no longer there.
Realizing that he needed to take a break, Akasaka pulled out a towel from his bag and sat down.
The sound of cicadas soaked into his body.
The windows were open, but there was no breeze coming in.
Still, he could feel the cool air, if just a little.
Just as they said,
the reason Akasaka started karate
was because of Yukie's death.
Of course, losing against the suspect in that kidnapping incident was one reason too, but more than that, the pain from Yukie's death was what made him start.
Yukie fell down the stairs at the hospital and died while he was on a business trip in Shishibone.
He couldn't get rid of that depression, so he started learning karate.
But in June 1983...
When the Great Hinamizawa Disaster occurred,
he realized something very important.
A girl had predicted Yukie's death.
And, in return, she wanted him to help her.
Yukie's death was an accident.
He could have told himself that there was nothing he could have done.
But, as for the girl... Rika Furude's death was different.
She knew about her own death five years prior.
When the Disaster occurred, he remembered Ooishi
and called him to make sure he was okay
...
...
...
then found out about everything.
When he was caught up, he fell into despair.
Rika Furude was the turning point in his life.
If he had believed what she predicted and did something about it, maybe Yukie wouldn't have had to fall down the stairs.
He took the oath to serve the public as a police officer, yet he didn't even notice the plea for help from a little girl. He shoved aside a conspiracy surrounding her until it was too late. He had five years to do something about it, but he didn't do anything. And she died.
Visiting Hinamizawa for the kidnapping case of the Minister's grandson
was definitely the turning point in his life.
If he had only listened to what that girl said.
Yukie would have never died.
And he could have been there to help Rika Furude.
...Those two things
continued to haunt him.
The investigation into the series of mysterious deaths in Hinamizawa that he heard about from Ooishi was put on indefinite hiatus because of the Disaster... but it was apparent to both of them that there was some conspiracy behind it all.
To challenge such things, he needed all the strength and experience that he could muster.
He was devoting himself to gain such strength,
but it was too late.
Everything had already ended.
While he was stuck in this dilemma, the dojo instructor admonished him.
There's nothing one can do about what's already done.
So in that case,
the only thing he can do is train diligently so that if the same thing is to happen again, he will be able to save a person in need.
It's all too late.
Everything is already over.
Yukie died in an accident,
Hinamizawa was destroyed in the gas disaster.
And Rika-chan was murdered as her intestines were ripped out while she was alive...
Shit!!!
I was too obsessed with Yukie's death and couldn't hear the girl's pleas for help...
No, if I had listened to her, I could have prevented Yukie's accident too...
...Damn it...
Damn it!!
Shiiiit!!
As Akasaka clutched his hair and looked up,
he noticed a small shrine overhead that protected the dojo.
Akasaka respected both Shinto and Buddhism, but he had never thought of praying to gods in times of despair.
But for the first time, he felt like praying for help.
If it was something he was capable of doing himself, he would never even consider praying.
But as it was something he couldn't resolve on his own, he prayed.
It was a very selfish wish.
If his wish were to come true, everyone in the whole world would wish for the same thing.
"...Please...
Please give me another chance to go back to that time.
I swear,
that this time,
I will save the both of them!!"
At that moment, Akasaka's body suddenly felt very light.
No, it was more like he was losing balance.
As if he was fainting.
Perhaps it was because he shouted so loudly after training, and his brain was lacking in oxygen.
But he couldn't take his eyes off of the shrine...
"...Thank you, Akasaka.
...We needed your thoughts."
...Was this a hallucination?
Akasaka felt like a stranger was talking to him.
"We must wish for a miracle,
and you must wish for a miracle too, otherwise a miracle will never occur.
Unless everyone wishes for a miracle, it won't occur.
Unless both sides reach out, their hands won't meet in the middle."
He didn't know what she was trying to say,
but somehow he felt like he couldn't miss a single word of it.
...He felt like it was something very, very important.
"...Akasaka,
if you wish for it, I'll grant you this miracle.
And it'll be a miracle for us too.
...Joining these broken Fragments will give us the chance to create an even greater Fragment.
...Your resolve, on its own, may greatly influence everyone's fates and intentions."
"Can you
turn back time to that day?"
"No,
I can't do that.
The only thing I can do is to let you notice.
To let you notice that things you can't learn from one Fragment, you can learn from others.
So all you have to do is to return this broken Fragment to where it belongs.
That's a big miracle itself.
Although, you probably won't even notice it."
Thank you, Akasaka.
Thank you for remembering me.
I don't even know how much time I've spent asking you for help.
But finally, it reached you.
So I'll say it one more time.
Please help me,
no.
Please help us.