Ichijō Mirai: "..."
For a moment, as if the driver had been caught off guard, the red car turned sideways, then quickly stabilized.
The question seemed important, and Akai Shūichi saw Ichijō Mirai turn around and cast a distant, scrutinizing glance, "What do you mean?"
The red car slowed down a bit, and went side by side with the black car. Ichijō Mirai was still smiling, but it was a bit different from the one he had just smiled, more gentle and friendly, as if he was chatting casually with a friend, and his tone of voice was gentle and harmless, "Why do you ask that all of a sudden?"
The response was too obvious, obviously.
['Messiah' and 'Satan', are not just ordinary enemies.]
So what is their relationship?
In the midst of the colorful thoughts, Akai Shūichi said, "It's because you showed me that I was wrong before."
Akai Shūichi had speculated about the relationship between the two criminals as 'enemies with a blood feud' during the last phone call using the wiretap, but Ichijō Mirai had pretty much shown him that he was wrong.
He explained in a light tone, "So, I've been thinking, other than 'enemies', what else do you have to do with each other?"
It was 'else'.
Akai Shūichi still thought that the relationship between the two criminals was hostile, but in addition to that, there were some special relationships that he didn't know about, which might be able to reverse the hostile relationship at some point.
For example...
The handcuffs were cold, and Akai Shūichi paused to put them away, looking over at Ichijō Mirai and realizing that the other man was looking at him with a strange look, as if he were thinking about something.
It wasn't an illusion.
Soon, Ichijō Mirai leaned against the car window and propped up his head, no longer hiding his thoughts, "I thought-"
When Akai Shūichi had just asked that question out of the blue, for a moment, Ichijō Mirai had thought that Akai Shūichi from the previous round had gone back in gear with him.
I also wondered: had Akai Shūichi's brain been contaminated by that purely slanderous theory of martyrdom and burial?
Akai Shūichi's statement was better than Ichijō Mirai's guess, as he smoothly continued, "You guessed it."
"We're not just enemies, but we were once as close to each other as companions."
How can [Organization Newcomer]'s self and [FBI Newcomer]'s self, two phases of a person, not be considered as close as one person?
Ichijō Mirai maintains what he said in the previous round, only changing the wording a bit to exclude the slander in advance, "But, he betrayed me."
"I have a problem with that guy."
A bit unpleasant.
He's not 'Satan', he's 'Messiah'!
The same 'Messiah' who was so naive and moral that he sent hundreds of people to heaven in one fell swoop!
"If we can find him..."
Ichijō Mirai paused for a moment, between the fact that he was planning to work with the FBI, that he could be moderately evil, but not seriously evil, and that he couldn't be associated with the FBI being sniped three times in Tokyo, and pushed the envelope, "After joining the organization, he simply and brutally killed so many people, and created three cases of panic..."
He expressed his disapproval, "He's like an executioner."
"This kind of guy shouldn't live in the world."
The black car and the red car were fast, but they drove with a tacit understanding that there was no strong smell of blood, but only a sense of excitement and the faint smell of smoke of a normal car race.
Akai Shūichi did not take advantage of the red car slowed down and parallel to his own time to accelerate overtaking, in the car window of the fast passing street scene, he looked to Ichijō Mirai, watching Ichijō Mirai's expression, "You can not find him?"
Ichijō Mirai put an end to the martyrdom theory, "'Satan' was so good that the organization sent him on a secret mission."
"The organization wanted to hide someone, and I couldn't find him, so I had to let him come forward."
Ahead, two or three blocks away, is the final point of the last round.
If we continue beyond that point, we'll be on a road that Ichijō Mirai hasn't traveled before.
It's possible to improvise, he's used to improvising, he's improvised a lot, but he's worried that the sick guy will improvise even more and bite.
And a few more miles of driving, a little more talking.
...Nevermind.
Ichijō Mirai glanced ahead, anticipating the end of the line, and smiled sideways, interfering with Akai Shūichi's attention with the topic, "Other people may not, but you should know something about the organization, and how scary their power is, right?"
"Mr. Akai?"
He said word for word, "Ak, ai, Tsuto, mu?"
It was the name of Akai Shūichi's father.
The moment he heard it, Akai Shūichi's eyes glazed over, and the way he looked at Ichijō Mirai sharpened like a sheathed sword.
In the same instant, Ichijō Mirai smiled a provocative smile and accelerated, the red car roaring ahead, overtaking the black car by about two cars, and then, as the black car accelerated right behind it, trying to catch up, he suddenly sprinted backward, side-swiped the front end of the black car, and stopped it on the side of the road.
At the sound of the crash, the impact of the black car being hit by the red car and the building on the side of the road were the first to hit the car.
Akai Shūichi immediately adjusted his stance to the sudden impact.
"Boom!"
The black car's side hit the building hard, and was stopped by the red car just as it was about to rebound, preventing it from hitting the building multiple times.
When all the sounds died down and the car stabilized again, Akai Shūichi's right hand was in an odd position, with bright red blood running down the side of his face.
He looked up at the red car.
Ichijō Mirai opened the door and stepped out.
As the driver of the accident, he looks better than Akai Shūichi, not hurt and walking quite easily, the first thing he looks at when he steps up to the black car is Akai Shūichi's injuries, and after making sure that there are no serious injuries, he bends down with the roof of the car, and looks through the window with a smile, "How are you?"
From the beginning of the race, the window of the black car was open in order to see and talk to Ichijō Mirai, and it's still the same now.
So the accident didn't cause the glass on the driver's side to shatter, but both sides of the glass on the passenger's side and the backseat shattered, creating sharp shards of glass that blossomed all over the interior of the car.
Akai Shūichi's side of his face was injured as a result.
He looked out the window at Ichijō Mirai and said, "I thought you-"
At the moment when Ichijō Mirai raised an eyebrow and looked like he was listening, Akai Shūichi suddenly reached out and struck with his fist, then turned it into a cross arm.
The intact left arm wrapped itself around Ichijō Mirai's neck and shoulders like a vine, forcefully strangling him through the window and into the car.
Asians are smaller than North Americans.
But that doesn't mean an adult male Asian can get through a car window without difficulty.
Akai Shūichi's arm brushed the top of the window first as he strangled Ichijō Mirai in, and he didn't change his expression, but he suddenly stopped.
There was a hard object that could not be ignored, that had no temperature, that looked like the muzzle of a gun, pressed against his abdomen.
Ichijō Mirai did not resist when he was attacked, Ichijō Mirai did not resist when he was taken into the car, and only slowly resisted when Akai Shūichi intended to follow up with a subdue.
While resisting, he didn't even remove his smile, "Good hands, not bad for the FBI."
"Did the mention of Mr. Akai Tsutomu make you more explosive?"
"But why did you stop?"
Ichijō Mirai bit out a very provocative tone of surprise, and pretended to realize, "Ah, I see, it's because of the gun."
He couldn't hold back a laugh, then barely suppressed it as he speculated thoughtfully and seriously, "Maybe I had the safety on, and the pistol was in an un-fire-able state, and wouldn't have shot you straight through the abdomen?"
"Won't you come to the table, Mr. Gambler?"