Taylor was in his office organizing papers during the early morning, his mood was melancholic after the story Chifuyu had retold the previous day. He knows more about him now, but the sadder he becomes whenever he remembers the expression on Chifuyu's face when he narrates, solemn but miserable.
"He's really good at masking his misery from his past, it just shows how much he doesn't want to relive them." Taylor thought as he piled up his folders, "A guineapig for drugs... I suppose that was the reason why he had a high immunity to sleeping drugs." He sighed, before the door of his office opened.
"Morning, old man." Chifuyu greeted him with a grin.
"Good morning," Taylor responded with a smile.
"What's the case today?" Chifuyu approached the table.
"Actually, we have to go and hire a translator for this case, since the victim is German." Taylor sighed as he went to take his coat and hat, "But here, this the file for the case. It's a rough summary, but we still need to interview this victim to make it clearer." He added as Chifuyu took the folder from his hand.
"Why? We don't need a translator," Chifuyu asked him.
"Are you saying you don't want to take this case?" Taylor asked him back with a sharp look.
"Can we just go meet this victim first?" Chifuyu walked away, ahead before Taylor, and the senior detective had no choice but to follow him.
"Mr. Anderson, you're here." Emma welcomed Taylor, but ignored Chifuyu as usual, leaving him to freely walk to the window of the interrogation room. Chifuyu could see a confused young woman sitting in the room, and she was obviously a German.
"Do we have a translator?" Taylor asked Emma.
"I told you already, old man. There's no need for that," Chifuyu rolled his eyes as he scoffed and grabbed Taylor's wrist to drag him into the interrogation room. "Guten Morgen," Chifuyu bowed to the young woman, he randomly started speaking in German, which shocked Taylor.
"Guten Morgen," the young woman responded, "My name is Petra Weber, I just arrived here two weeks ago." she introduced herself in German.
"She said her name is Petra Weber, and she just got here two weeks ago." Chifuyu turned to Taylor, who quickly got the memo and took out a pen and paper to take notes. "Do you mind explaining to me the summary of the incident, fehlschlagen?" Chifuyu continued with Petra in German.
"Yes, so this young man with dark blonde hair and green eyes dressed in a brown trench coat entered the bank after me on Wednesday afternoon. He was tall and slender, and it was only moments until he pulled out a gun. His face was covered by a medical face mask, so I didn't get to see his entire face, but he has a birth mark near his right eye." Petra explains to Chifuyu in German, he was nodding to know his comprehension while Taylor stood next to him in confusion, he just wrote down the translation told by Chifuyu after.
"How did it go?" Emma asked when Taylor and Chifuyu left the interrogation room an hour later, she had caught on that Chifuyu was able to communicate just fine with the victim.
"I didn't expect you to be fluent in German, young man..." Taylor sighed as he puts his notepad away.
"Just to let you know; I'm fluent in Japanese, French, English, Latin, German, and Russian. I can speak, read, and write them." Chifuyu told the two, who paused in visible stone shock. "I just learned them from books and eavesdropping on native speaker immigrants, nothing much." He shrugged in the end.
"Wow..." Taylor shook his head in marvel.
"Like I said, we didn't need a translator." Chifuyu sneered, arrogant yet again.
"Everything about him takes my breath away..." Taylor thought, he just finished making the full report an hour later. "He can fight and he's intelligent..."
"Oi, le vieillard." Chifuyu appeared out of nowhere in the hallway.
"What??!!" Taylor shouted instinctively, "You're making me age faster, stop that already." He deflated, while Chifuyu chuckled.
"Aren't you already an old man?" he smirked.
"What do you want?" Taylor knows Chifuyu came for a reason, that's how he always has been.
"Petra Weber's case is just a robbery case, right? I'm sure you and your men can handle this case easily," Chifuyu said, "So, I won't be coming to the office early tomorrow, I have something to investigate beforehand." He added.
"Something else?" Taylor felt like he knows what Chifuyu is up to, but he couldn't wrap his head around what it was specifically.
"Don't worry about it, I want to take care of it myself." Chifuyu smirked, the mysterious kind that made Taylor curious.
***
In the early morning, when the sun was yet to rise, Chifuyu travelled all the way to the edge of Paris in the cold weather that he seemed to be unbothered by. Dressed in his Alabaster attire but his mask stored under his white cloak, and he arrived in front of the facility he escaped from 3 years ago. It was abandoned and left open, mould was everywhere on the walls and floors when Chifuyu walked in. The damp atmosphere and scent of water filled the facility, the roofs were broken and the darkness made Chifuyu use a holding oil lamp. As soon he stepped into the building, a vague stain trail was on the floor and he decided to follow it as he tours the facility. His steps echoed in the hallways as he passes, then he lowered the hood of his cloak when he reached the trial room, the room he vividly remembers where the professor would inject him with a variety of drugs. The surgical table used for the test subjects to lay on, and a flash of memories repeated in Chifuyu's head. The room was dirty and mouldy, but clean of bottles and examination equipment.
Chifuyu moved on to continue walking down the hallways and followed the vague trail, going through the vivid sense of familiarity since he would often walk down the hallways of the facility with a book in front of him. He walked pass the field where he reminiscences the daily exercises and where he finished the big Russian in a sheer second, but Chifuyu paused when he reached the hallway of rooms and his eyes widened, it was where the vague trail ended into a scene. Blood splatter stains were everywhere and a few skeletons were in the hallway, there a few others in the rooms he could see through the opened doors. Chifuyu kicked a bullet case when he took a step, he picked it up and finally understood the scenario that took place 3 years ago.
"So, the rest of the test subjects were killed... The professor might have decided to get rid of all of the evidence here, which explains why the trial room was clean of his drugs and equipment." Chifuyu thought as he slowly walked pass the rooms, lifting his oil lamp. "He completed his research elsewhere and had the U067 as the result, there's no guarantee too that he didn't kidnap another batch of people to experiment on. Where could he possibly be at now? Where could he had move to as another hideout?" he began to think deeply as the sun slowly rises, and he stopped his pace when the sunlight flooded the hallway, creating a clear view of the hallway. The blood stains were clearer to the naked eye, the hallway Chifuyu was standing in the middle of sparked an abandoned massacre. Chifuyu's eyes widened once again, and a picture of the scene that took place 3 years ago flashed in his mind.
The security guards had dragged Adam's body after killing him to the hallway of rooms all the way from the exit of the facility, the professor leading the way and commanded the armed guards to assassinate everyone in the facility. The security guards threw Adam to the wall at the end of the hallway and opened the rooms with one hit on the emergency button, and gunshots filled the atmosphere. Screams and the subjects running out of their rooms in horror were overpowered the firing noises, but it all turned into silence when all was murdered by the rapid and merciless shower of bullets.
Chifuyu stepped closer, his empty eyes looked down to a skeleton in front of him, at the end of the hallway. It was sitting relaxedly with its head slightly tilted sideways, the sunlight moved to shine on the serial number sewn on the left chest area of the ragged shirt the skeleton was wearing, 024. It brough a slight smile on Chifuyu's face, but spiritless combined with his empty eyes.
"How have you been, old man?" he said with a gentle voice, "I never had a chance to thank you, or even admit to you myself that I wanted to join your family. But now, I don't think I would be able to be called family by anyone. I'm 17, I'm not a little kid like you always call me anymore... And besides, I'm running out of time." His slight sorrowful smile remained as those words came out of his mouth in a mild tone, as if not wanting to wake someone up.
"Funny, I might come to meet you soon... à bientôt, old man." Those were his last words before he left the building, leaving an iris in front of the skeleton he picked from his own small garden at his home.
"Good morning, Mr. Anderson." Jeffrey entered Taylor's office instead of Chifuyu.
"Good morning, Jeffrey." Taylor greeted back as he placed his phone down, just finished making a call while his daughter was upstairs. Eve was getting ready for school when she heard the lock on her window click and the window opening.
"Chifuyu-kun, how many times do I have to tell you to at least knock before you-" Eve groaned and complained but stopped when the guest was not who she was expecting, "A Harvester-?!" but she was knocked unconscious before she could react or scream. Lucas was in the hallway brooming, when he was suddenly knocked unconscious. Taylor looked up and Jeffrey turned around when they heard the door to the office open, and their eyes widen in shock when a Harvester was in the doorway.
"What the-?!" Taylor jumped up, he and Jeffrey reached for their weapons, but their reaction was not quick enough compared to the Harvester.
Chifuyu returned to his home to change into his winter attire, he walked out of his small rooftop home when he saw smoke from a street awfully familiar to him.
"Is that the Anderson residence?!" he gasped, he started sprinting as fast as he could on roofs a second later.
Chifuyu arrived in a few minutes, out of breath but stone-shocked when he stopped in front of the residence. People were surrounding the building, watching, which infuriated Chifuyu when he noticed.
"Can you Parisians ever do anything helpful?! Why are you all just standing here watching??!!" Chifuyu shouted in rage, then sprinted to the telephone box nearby to call the fire department. "Hello?! Is there anyone inside??!!" Chifuyu shouted through the fire, while the crowd behind him backed further away.
"Tsuguha-!" Jeffrey emerged from the fire and fell onto the ground outside, coughing vigorously after.
"Jeffrey!" Chifuyu approached Jeffrey and helped him further away from the blazing house, "What happened??" he asked Jeffrey.
"A-A Harvester came, it's the last one. Mr. Anderson, Ms. Anderson, and Peters... they took them on a horse carriage. A carriage with a blue flag on top and black horses, it went that way." Jeffrey pointed to the right direction of the road, "Go! They're in danger! I'll handle the fire," he pushed Chifuyu away, forcing him to chase after the three who got kidnapped.
"Entendu," Chifuyu nodded.
"I'm counting on you," Jeffrey responded with a small nod, still out of breath. Chifuyu jumped on a roof and sprinted to the direction Jeffrey pointed at, disappearing from Jeffrey's sight in two seconds.
"Get of me! Let us go!" Lucas was rebelling while the Harvester was tying his arms and legs with a metal chain, Eve was already tied up with a big rope, and Taylor was tied with the same rope. The Harvester had taken all of Taylor's weapons and belongings by throwing his trench coat to the other side of the box carriage.
"Quiet, rat." The Harvester, that Taylor noticed to be Harvester 01 from the label on the assassin's shoulder. Taylor remained calm and has been silent for a few moments, scanning the Harvester from head to toe. He noticed the Harvester has a very familiar figure, but he couldn't distinguish the assassin's voice because it was affected by the Harvester's full mask.
"Dad..." Eve moved closer to her father, scared.
"It's going to be alright, stay calm, sweetheart." Taylor smiled to comfort his daughter, then turned back to lock his eyes on the Harvester. "His figure and voice are familiar, and he tied Lucas specially with a metal chain... As if he knows that Lucas is exceptionally strong, only little people know that... This person must be someone I know," Taylor thought.
"There it is," Chifuyu saw the horse carriage described by Jeffrey, and he jumped down to the road to land on the back of one of the two horses tied to a carriage parked at the side of the road. "I'm borrowing this horse for a little! Merci!" Chifuyu cut of the tie with his pocket knife and hits the horse's rear end to make it start running, not letting the carriage owner to even respond.
"Hey, I know you, don't I?" Taylor questioned the Harvester.
"Really? Fascinating," the Harvester responded with a mocking voice, while Lucas was determined to break free.
Chifuyu caught up with the speeding carriage on the horse, he was only one foot away and kept that distance when he slowly stepped his feet on the horse he was riding, using his excellent balance to squat on the running horse.
"Merci, buddy." Chifuyu pets the horse and he smiled to thank it, before he jumped off the horse and burst through the door of the carriage. The Harvester was nowhere in sight, which is why he quickly turns to Taylor to untie him.
"Chifuyu-kun??" Eve was surprised.
"Jeffrey! How's Jeffrey?" Taylor asked Chifuyu.
"The dude's fine, he's dealing with the fire right now." Chifuyu responded.
"Fuyuchi! Look out!" Lucas shouted when the Harvester suddenly appeared and was behind Chifuyu, quickly hits him aside and holds him against the ground by his head and neck.
"Look who finally showed up," the Harvester's deep voice showed he was smirking under his mask, "I thought I needed someone to tell you and make you chase after me, leaving that little detective behind was a good choice." He added while Chifuyu was kicking the Harvester to stop him before he could crush his head.
"Darn, he's so strong!" Chifuyu thought as he gritted his teeth, he launched a punch to the Harvester's chest but ended up breaking his knuckles accompanied with a loud clang.
"Was that a metal noise?" Taylor thought in surprise, he was still tied up since the Harvester attacked before Chifuyu could finish.
"What armour is this?!" It was the first time and only this last Harvester was protected with that strong of an armour underneath his black suit, it caught Chifuyu off guard. Chifuyu placed his feet on the Harvester's stomach and pushed him upwards, over him and Chifuyu rolled backwards with the assassin because he was still holding onto the assassin's arm, the two of them fell out of the moving carriage.
"Fuyuchi!!" Lucas was trying to break free from his chains, even bruising his wrists. Taylor quickly finished untying himself from the work Chifuyu had done before and jumped to the front of the carriage to stop the horses by pulling their leashes, only a few metres away from where the Harvester was holding Chifuyu down in the middle of the road. It was broad daylight and the people around them frantically ran away when they saw the fight taking place, leaving Chifuyu struggling to break free from Harvester 01's grip on the snow.
"Shit, I've never met someone this powerful before!" Chifuyu thought, he was turning pale.
"Seriously, you're too cool for someone who's getting killed." The Harvester sounded bored, choking Chifuyu who was struggling to overpower him.
"Lucas, Eve, wait here, okay?" Taylor told his daughter and housekeeper as he quickly grabs his weapons from the other side of the carriage, "Chifuyu's struggling, I have to help him." He jumped out of the carriage with his pistol in his hands and aimed at the Harvester as he slowly steps closer. Chifuyu resulted to be weakened to lower the Harvester's guard, which made him successfully launching a punch with his unharmed hand to break the assassin's mask.
"If I die here, might as well disclose your identity." Chifuyu said as the mask pieces fell to the ground around Chifuyu's neck, but Chifuyu's eyes widen in shock when the face of the assassin was revealed. "Victor...?" Chifuyu was frozen, he had stopped rebelling when Taylor lowered his gun, also in shock.
"You caught me, eh..." it was the first time Chifuyu saw a hateful expression on Victor's face, "You never expected me to be a fine assassin, huh? I'm way stronger than you are, and yet you're always so full of yourself!" he shouted in the end.
"Why? I considered you as a friend..." Chifuyu's voice was coarse, clearly he was in pain both physically and mentally.
"I did as well, but until Evening admitted she was actually in love with you this entire time! I love her so much, and you destroyed me with your existence!! It was all about you as soon as you showed up!" Victor was filled with hatred, "All I wanted was Evening, but all I want now is to destroy you!! I'm tired of pretending to be a good man and forcing a smile, friendly demeanour for everyone!! I want you to die! You deserve it, asshole! You shouldn't have existed in the first place! Your entire life is a nuisance!!" he yelled, Chifuyu and the other three who heard him were speechless.
"Victor..." Taylor was still in shock.
"You're getting killed, I'm trying to kill you right now... but you're so quiet," Victor tightened his grip on Chifuyu's neck, seeing how the 17-year-old wasn't fighting back. "Why aren't you scared? Cry! Beg for your life!!" Victor shouted, filled with anger, a psychopath under the calm and blissful composure he had been wearing. Chifuyu just remained silent, he had this hurt expression on his face, he felt betrayed and disappointed.
"Chifuyu's going to get killed!" Taylor raised his pistol, then a loud shatter noise was heard because Lucas finally broke his chains apart.
"Mr. Anderson, I will go help Fuyuchi." Lucas approached Taylor, and the detective looked down to see Lucas's injured wrists, they were bruised and some skin was torn off.
"No, I will take care of this. Help my daughter," Taylor told Lucas.
"Yes, sir." Lucas just obeyed and went back into the carriage to free Eve.
"He's wearing an armour underneath his suit; the only clear area is his head... I have no choice but to kill him..." he tightened his lips and he heavy-heartedly pulled the trigger, shooting Victor through his head, killing him instantly. Victor fell onto the ground next to Chifuyu, while Chifuyu coughed vigorously and gasped for air. "Chifuyu, are you okay?!" Taylor approached him, also checked if Victor was still alive or not.
"Thanks, old man... Sorry for always troubling you like this..." Chifuyu slowly sat down, there was splatters of Victor's blood on his cheek.
"Chifuyu...?" Taylor looked up when he noticed Chifuyu's lifeless tone of voice, he paused when he saw the 17-year-old's empty eyes and emotionless face. He looked like he had just gotten his soul stolen from him, leaving an empty shell. "You alright, kid...?" Taylor asked Chifuyu hesitantly and the teenager slowly turned to him, Chifuyu's neck was bruised from Victor's grip.
"Yeah, I'm fine..." he slightly smiled, but it was a hurtful and depressed type that Taylor is seeing for the first time from Chifuyu, Taylor didn't once imagine such a depressed look could surface on Chifuyu's face.
"Is this what he looked like... when he lost his family, and Adam Williams?" Taylor thought as he relaxed his shoulders.
"Fuyuchi!" Lucas and Eve ran to Chifuyu.
"Chifuyu-kun, are you okay?" Eve kneeled next to him, the depressed look on his face scared Eve enough to throw her arms around him. "A-Are you cold...?" she asked him, patting his head.
"A little..." Chifuyu buried his face in Eve's shoulder, he was weak and so deflated that he didn't have the strength to hug her back.
"Alright, I'll go call back up." Taylor placed his handkerchief over Victor's head to cover his face and death wound before he stood up to walk towards a nearby payphone. "Chifuyu looked so hurt..." he thought as he started dialling the number, he wasn't able to take that image of Chifuyu's miserable face out of his head for quite some time.
***