"Is there a detective on the plane?"
That question had made me doubt my ears at first, but it had once launched me into a dazzling adventure.
It wasn't a line you generally heard on passenger planes ten thousand meters in the air.
In a situation like that, people would usually be asking for a doctor or a nurse.
Who'd have believed they'd want a detective? I'd been born with a knack for getting dragged into stuff, so at the time, I'd wondered if it was my fault.
"It's not fair."
In my seat on the plane, I'd heaved one of my usual sighs. However, that was when things had really started getting unusual.
"Yes, I'm a detective."
The girl who'd spoken had been sitting in the seat on my right.
She had blue eyes and a pale silver bob. Her dress seemed to be modeled on a military uniform, and it flared as she brandished her musket. Once she was on the scene, the incident was over.
The consummately beautiful ace detective. Her code name was Siesta.
What she wanted was to fulfill her clients' requests and act in their best interests.
For some reason, Siesta appointed me as her assistant. Together, we left on a three-year journey to defeat the enemies of the world—and then death parted us.
At the time, we were fighting an organization called SPES. A member of the enemy's upper ranks, a girl named Hel, defeated Siesta and took her heart.
And so my adventure was over… Or so I thought. "You're the ace detective?"
A year later, a certain client came to me.
She had red eyes and long, glossy black hair. This high school girl, whose trademark was her red ribbon, pulled me from my tepid routine with her blazing passion.
She was both a client and a proxy detective—her name was Nagisa Natsunagi. She wanted me to locate someone who'd saved her life.
She pulled me back into the extraordinary, and soon I found myself with a wish: Someday, I'd take Siesta back.
However, resurrecting the dead carried a heavy price. Natsunagi literally risked her life to let Siesta retake her heart.
In the process, she also defeated Seed, our final enemy. This time, we'd won our happy ending.
…Or so it seemed. We'd made just one miscalculation: the "seed" in Siesta's heart.
As long as that was there, someday she'd lose control and become a monster. The only way to treat it was for Siesta to stay asleep and prevent the seed from growing.
When Siesta gave up on everything and tried to get rid of herself, I stood in her way. In the end, with the help of our other friends, I got her to take a long nap instead.
On that day, the ace detective became a sleeping beauty, surrounded by the blissful scent of black tea.
That ended the first phase of our adventure. However, it really was too soon for an epilogue.
So that I'd be able to wake Siesta up one day, I left on a journey with companions who were hoping for the same thing.
"I'll always be your right arm, Kimihiko, and I'll be your left eye as well." "I'm your enemy, Kimizuka. When you take a wrong step, I'll slap you." "It's okay, Kimizuka. Your wish and all of ours will come true."
"Yeah. Let's go on a journey to save our friend."
Then, after living out a dazzling adventure that lasted more than a year, we got through the mother of all disasters, which would later come to be known as "the Great Cataclysm"—
—and at last, we worked a miracle.
It's been a year since then, and seven years since it all began.
I—Kimihiko Kimizuka—am twenty now, a legal adult. I'm soaking from the
top of my head to the tips of my toes in "the sequel," an ordinary life.
Am I okay with that, you ask?
Sure. It's not like I'm causing trouble for anybody. I mean, it's true, isn't it?
The detective is already—