The Crown Prince Who Raises Alt Characters

#227 Leaflet - The Case of Detective Miss I Isadora Delacroix enjoyed reading newspapers. There were those who criticized newspapers as media that only conveyed content to suit the government's taste, but there was still no better means for quickly acquiring various information. Not blindly believing newspaper content and inferring the truth through reasoning and verification was routine for Isadora, who was a detective. "─The 'Darnoua Scandal' that shook the entire republic. The whistleblower Isaac, who contributed to solving that hideous crime, died in prison. Prison officials explained his death as weakness due to influenza (continued below)" Therefore, when she discovered such an article in the newspaper one day, Isadora didn't trust the content at face value, but instead thought about it in combination with various surrounding circumstances. Those who could be considered major media didn't treat Isaac's death as particularly important. They didn't even make it a newspaper headline, but merely wrote it as a small article in the back pages, tucked away in a corner. Even though some time had passed since the Darnoua Scandal ended, it wasn't forgotten completely from public memory. If there had been various strange aspects to Isaac's death, it would have been sufficient material to stir up and use for conspiracy theories. Conversely, the fact that they didn't do so became evidence that, from the journalists' perspective, Isaac's death wasn't particularly strange or thrilling. The possibility that something tremendous had actually happened but the case was covered up due to government pressure was also low. In that case, either no article would have come out in the first place, or conversely, an article with firm direction and intensity according to the government's intentions would have emerged. An unremarkable death. A death that received no attention. ─A death that occurred when people's interest had cooled, perfectly suitable for concealing one's form. "Whoo..." Isadora, who had been steadily gazing at the smoke rising from her pipe, suddenly grasped it with her hand. Naturally, smoke cannot be caught in one's hand. Just like how the various hypotheses floating in her mind were nothing more than simple fantasies without clear evidence. Of course, Isadora's brilliant mind had already thought of a way to capture the insubstantial smoke. She was simply lost in thought because that method went against common sense and morality as understood by society. One puff, two puffs. And the moment she inhaled and exhaled the third puff of smoke, Isadora reached her conclusion. "What the hell, let's try doing something crazy." *** People of the republic prefer burial when sending off the dead. This is because there remains a belief that the dead can rest comfortably only if their bodies are returned to the earth without being damaged. In some quarters, voices were emerging that cremation should become mainstream at least for space efficiency, but more time was needed for overall public opinion to change. So then, what happens when someone dies in a prison, which could be considered a public institution? Generally, they notify the family of the prisoner's death and leave it to the family to decide how to handle the corpse. However, among prisoners, there are those who have no proper family, or even if they do exist, have such bad relations with their family that they refuse to claim the body. The republic buried such people appropriately in nearby public cemeteries. Naturally, in such cases, one couldn't expect a grand funeral or an ornate tombstone. In the first place, even burying them in a public cemetery was closer to an act of disposal since corpses couldn't just be left alone, rather than out of fondness for the criminals. An environment rarely visited by people, and graveyard keepers who were lazy and negligent enough to make one doubt their existence. Thud! Thunk! ─These were more than sufficient conditions for Isadora to dig up Isaac's grave without any interference. "When I get involved with this guy, I really end up doing all sorts of strange things." Isadora continued digging while grumbling lightly. Originally, digging with a shovel is considerable manual labor, but for her, who possessed powerful physical abilities despite her small stature, it was merely bothersome rather than strenuous work. After scooping out dirt for a long while, she finally felt something like the sensation of the shovel tip catching on something. Having found the coffin where Isaac was buried, she removed the nails that had secured the coffin lid and checked its interior. And she let out a hollow laugh. "I knew this would happen." There was no corpse inside the coffin. All that remained was a pile of strange powder of unknown identity and clothes left behind like a shed skin. After collecting the powder in a medicine wrapper made from folded clean paper, Isadora examined the scene once more. There were no traces of the ground being dug up before she came, nor any traces of the coffin lid being opened. Moreover, there were no traces of anything trying to escape by applying physical force from inside the coffin. The first thing that came to mind was the possibility that no corpse had existed from the beginning, but Isadora thought this wasn't very reasonable. Because when faking death in prison, transferring the body to a cemetery, and burying it, there would be quite a few witnesses to the process, and it was unlikely that all of them had seen a phantom. Advanced illusions or suggestive magic might have been involved, but in that case, the clothes left behind and the mysterious powder couldn't be explained. "...He didn't escape to the outside, but disappeared from within?" A flash of insight that was still lacking clear logic, closer to half intuition. Storing that thought in a corner of her mind, Isadora began to restore the grave excavation site to its original state. And some time later. "Surprisingly, there's nothing particularly unusual." Due to the special constitution of the Dracrois family that gains excellent abilities in exchange for craving blood, or perhaps to deal with curses, Isadora was also deeply versed in pharmacy, medicine, and chemistry. Having successfully analyzed the powder left inside Isaac's coffin, Isadora couldn't help but furrow her brow at the results. She would have been more accepting if it had been an unknown substance beyond her ability to understand. But the powder was merely broken down into very fine particles; fundamentally, it consisted only of substances that could easily be found in natural environments. [Calcium phosphate, calcium carbonate, sodium - components that make up the human body or wouldn't be strange to find in a body.] [Powder left behind = Isaac's body?] [Even combining all the powder left behind would be insufficient to constitute an adult male's body] [Something that doesn't remain materially was mixed with actual matter to form a body?] [Or the possibility exists that spatial transfer magic was used, with the powder being a byproduct of that.] After scribbling down various notes, Isadora exhaled cigarette smoke with a sigh. Because she realized that the investigation had hit a dead end at this point. To move forward from here, two things were greatly needed. One was magical knowledge that Isadora lacked. The other was the testimonies of those who had experienced something similar to what she had encountered. The former would be difficult to obtain within the republic where magical knowledge was poor, but... "...the latter seems worth looking into." Some might have pointed out that it was nonsensical talk if they had heard it. They might say what could possibly come from randomly searching when there was no proper information about the target to find, and it was unclear whether such cases actually existed. However, Isadora wasn't particularly putting on airs. "─Outsiders. Those with unclear identities, or even if they have identities, beings whose past histories are difficult to actually verify." "Those who were central figures in incidents of a certain scale or larger, or who were near such central figures." "Finally, those who met their death or disappeared after the incident concluded, or during that conclusion process." About three weeks or so. Isadora, who had been immersed in investigation while barely managing sleep and meals, was finally able to find an incident that piqued her interest. Misthaven, a port city in the northern republic. The criminal conflicts that occurred there and the mass suicide into the sea. Isadora rose to her feet. *** "Well, after that it was days of running around in the field. witch Hecate, I went through numerous hardships to find you, but I'll skip that part. You don't seem particularly curious about it." So, Isadora added. "Anyway, given these circumstances, won't you please remove this blade now?" At Isadora's words, Hystia, who had been pointing a knife at her neck, fell into brief contemplation. At first, she had been angered because Isadora's statements denying Hamel's death seemed to insult his death, but after hearing the story, it seemed that wasn't Isadora's purpose. When Hystia withdrew the knife, Isadora joked that she could finally speak more comfortably. "Anyway, the core point I want to make is this. You saw Hamel jumping into the sea and thought he died, but perhaps he might still be alive." Isadora explained that even the man who was supposedly buried in a grave had only mysterious whereabouts and his death couldn't be confirmed, so how could one be certain of the death of a man who merely fell into the sea without any body being found. Hystia's pupils trembled greatly. What she recalled was a moment of ensemble performance. When she had given up everything and was about to end her life on a cliff, the melody that resonated as if scolding and comforting Hystia. At the time, she had simply dismissed it as a miracle, something that dead Hamel had left behind to help her one last time... but what if it wasn't that? What if Hamel was actually alive, and because he couldn't bear to watch Hystia make the wrong choice, he tried to save her through music? "If that's true, if Hamel is really alive... then why hasn't he appeared before me again?" "An optimistic prediction and a pessimistic one. Which is to your taste?" "Tell me both." "The optimistic prediction would be that he thought only this way could you become independent as a human being. You had finally escaped from the organization to walk your own path, but if Hamel's presence remained there, you would continue to depend on him." It was difficult to assert that such a thing couldn't happen. Because even Hystia herself thought that it really would have been that way. "Then what about the pessimistic prediction?" "Perhaps it's because the individual called 'musician Hamel' no longer exists in this world?" "What?" To Hystia who frowned as if asking what that meant, Isadora shrugged her shoulders. "Isaac, who was my assistant, and your musician Hamel. These two people share the common trait of being outsiders with unclear pasts. In other words, it could mean that their very identities might not be real but fictional from the beginning." Not someone who was actually born into this world and continued living, but a fictional being born only for a specific time, specific place, and specific role. The concept itself wasn't particularly foreign to Hystia. Because it wasn't particularly uncommon for certain organizations to assign false identities to their members before deploying them on missions. "Then you're saying Hamel was also moving under someone's orders? That everything he did in Misthaven was all part of some plan?" "Not everything would have been planned. I can't be certain without hearing the story directly from you, the person involved, but at least from an external perspective, there was no reason for Hamel to help you other than personal goodwill." "...Goodwill." There might have been a separate purpose. However, the days spent together with you were not lies in themselves. At such an assertion from Isadora, Hystia felt her heart becoming somewhat calmer. Perhaps even that might have been what the detective before her was aiming for. "Alright, I'll cooperate. But I have a condition." "What is it?" "I've abandoned the name 'Hecate.' From now on, call me Hystia." "Ah, that's a reasonable condition. I'll accept it." As if it were a sign of cooperation, Isadora extended one hand. Hystia also grasped it in return. The detective who had closed her detective agency and the former crime organization boss shook hands in this way. (E/N: I'm not sure how far Isadora will manage to go, but it would be fun if she managed to gather the whole group)