Chapter 124 Dazai's Whereabouts

On Ryunosuke Akutagawa's birthday, Ace came to the port to see the Akutagawa family off.

Originally, they thought about leaving the three members who had just turned 15 to stay at home in Yokohama. After all, there were too many unknowns at sea and it might be dangerous. But the three children's rebuttal was also very strong. The sea was dangerous, so would Yokohama not be dangerous? If they went with the main force, they could still take care of each other. If they stayed in Yokohama, they couldn't always bother Mr. Ace, right?

This left the older children who wanted to keep them speechless. With the frequent dangerous incidents in Yokohama in recent years, it is hard to say which is more dangerous, Yokohama or the sea. In their impression, with the beautification of Ace's adventure stories, they always feel that Yokohama may be much more dangerous than the sea_(:зゝ∠)_

So in the end, everyone got on the boat together.

Everyone was very excited on the day of sailing, and someone even tried to invite Ace to join them on the ship, but was unsuccessful.

Of course, Ace would go back automatically after leaving Moriole for one day, and there was no way he could stay on their ship until the next day. And Akutagawa Ryunosuke didn't want Ace to be with them, because it would make him feel like a chick that couldn't leave Mr. Ace's protection, and he didn't want the other party to look down on him.

"Mr. Ace! Thank you for your care over the past year!"

The boys and girls heading for a new tomorrow gathered at the side of the ship and waved to Ace on the shore.

"Let's go——"

"We'll send you a postcard—"

"We'll bring you some souvenirs when we come back, Mr. Ace—"

…

The cruise ship gradually sailed away from the port, and the shouting on the ship gradually became farther and farther away and smaller. The ship also became smaller and smaller, and finally turned into a black dot and disappeared on the sea.

It was the first time that Ace sent a pirate group that was about to set sail out to sea. To be honest, it felt very magical, like something was being passed down, and like sending a child at home on an unknown journey.

As the leader of the Port Mafia, Mori Ogai would not leave Yokohama unless necessary, and he could not leave for a long time, which made it impossible for Ace to sail on the sea in this world. As his student, Akutagawa Ryunosuke went on a voyage, which was a bit like seeing the sea for him.

...Did Miss Makino and the others feel the same way when they saw Luffy and I leaving Windmill Village?

After seeing off the Vertibird Pirates, Ace wanted to go back to the Port Building directly. Out of habit, he wanted to find Mori Ogai to share what happened today, but when he came to his senses, he felt a little awkward.

The Mimic incident ultimately meant that he could no longer talk to Mori Ougi about anything like he used to.

There is no news at all from Dazai Osamu, it's as if he has disappeared from the face of the earth and there is no trace of him at all.

Ace turned around and went to look for Nakahara Chuuya.

…

It hasn't been long since Chuuya Nakahara came back from Italy. He stayed in Yokohama for a while, doing mostly clerical work and a few scattered combat missions.

——Recently, Yokohama has been relatively peaceful, and there have been few armed actions that require him as an officer to suppress. He would only be sent on a mission that requires military suppression because he has too much paperwork to do and wants to get out and do some exercise.

In the past few months, Chuuya Nakahara has been living a relatively comfortable life because Verlaine went to the United States to take the college entrance examination, and the results are out. He is currently making a fuss in the United States.

If Verlaine wanted to go to an ordinary university, it would be fine. The problem was that he wanted to go to the best one, far better than Mori Owl, which he definitely couldn't get into. But he didn't think it was his problem at all, so he made a fuss in the United States.

If the Transcendents start making trouble, it will be very difficult to deal with it, especially since Verlaine is an assassin who is good at hiding and assassinating, and has a state of uncontrollable and completely released power. Even if there are Transcendents in the United States, it will be very troublesome to deal with Verlaine.

They even secretly contacted the British Belltower, who had an old grudge against Verlaine, and jointly captured and killed Verlaine. As a result, the Belltower did not want the United States to take advantage, so they sent a few people to go through the motions, and both sides were killed by Verlaine.

The upper echelons of the United States are all controlled by monopoly capitalists. When they saw that the losses far outweighed the benefits, they wanted to settle the matter peacefully and deal with Verlaine. They registered him at Stanford and agreed that he would go through the formalities again when graduation season came, and then they would directly issue him a certificate, and then openly expel him from the country.

After being admitted to Stanford, Weilun thought that he could teach his younger brother with legitimate reasons. Nakahara Chuuya, who had enjoyed a good life for a while because of Lantang's relaxed education, suddenly began to inquire from Mori Ogai from time to time whether there were any business trips abroad.

As for the problem between Ace and Mori Ougai, he is just a friend and a subordinate, and he has said everything that can be said. The rest depends on them.

Not long after, Zhongyuan Zhong went to Europe again, this time he went to the UK. The port mafia does not have a large territory in Xixili, and now it has entered a stable development stage, so there is no need for cadres to always go there to stabilize the situation.

The colonel, on the other hand, had returned from the United States several times. The situation in the United States was not as complicated as that in Italy, and his experience in Italy was not very useful.

As we all know, the United States is a multi-state union country, and the laws of each state are different. At the beginning, the colonel suffered a lot from this. Although the situation gradually improved later, it was also intermittent. And compared to the Italian mafia, which relatively abides by the rules of the local mafia, the American mafia seems quite chaotic, which also makes the colonel's work in the United States very difficult.

This time when he came back to Yokohama, he just missed Nakahara Chuuya who was going to England. Hearing that this new cadre who has become very famous in recent years went on a business trip again so soon, he felt a little regretful.

I was a little surprised when I heard about Dazai Osamu's defection.

He sat across the table and took a big bite of beef curry noodles, then said to Ace who was sitting opposite him: "To be honest, I always thought Dazai would become the pillar of the port mafia, but I didn't expect him to defect at the age of 18."

He was still in the United States when Mimic attacked, and he had no idea of ​​the specific situation. He didn't even know that Dazai Osamu's defection was related to Mimic.

Ace paused in chewing the steak and didn't respond.

He knew the reason why Dazai Osamu defected, so it was even more difficult for him to tell others the inside story.

The colonel was not a careless person, he was quite careful, after all, he was a soldier before, he couldn't be an officer if he wasn't careful enough. Seeing Ace's expression, he knew that there was something hidden behind Dazai Osamu's defection, so he subtly led the topic to a less serious direction.

"To be honest, it's a bit of a shame that Dazai left. When he was still here, he was always quarreling with Chuuya. Now that one of them is gone, there's nothing interesting to watch. I was waiting for the new issue of "Chuuya Never Gives Up This Week" to come out."

“……?” Ace was stunned. “What…what Chuuya?”

"'Chuuya who refuses to admit defeat this week', a journal Dazai used to make about Chuuya's embarrassing moments." The colonel repeated it with a frown, and looked at Ace with some surprise, "You haven't seen it? Miss Hongye has seen it too, um... the leader should know about it too."

Ace was shocked and looked confused.

Did he miss it because he was always out? How could Mori Ogai never show him such a thing? But it seems that there is no such book in Mr. Ogai's office?

Seeing his expression, the colonel knew that the other party really didn't know about this. He comforted him, "It doesn't matter if you don't know. This thing is only known to a small group of people in the upper echelons. Maybe you just don't know about it."

"They are so thoughtful." Ace exclaimed sincerely.

His previous companions would at most make jokes about their companions' embarrassing moments, but this was the first time he had seen such a thing being bound into a book.

After dinner, the colonel called the waiter to settle the bill, and then took a walk on the streets of Yokohama. The situation of the mafia in the United States was more complicated, and the colonel knew that he would have to go there to deal with things soon. Now that he was back in Yokohama, it was almost like a vacation.

Although they had just finished their meal, the two grown men did not eat too much. They bought some street snacks while walking on the road.

"By the way, Ace, what's going on between you and the leader? Are you having a conflict?"

Ace was stunned, then said in a depressed tone: "Even you can see it, is it so obvious? I'm obviously much better now..."

"So there is indeed a conflict." The colonel confirmed.

When he came back this time, he noticed that the atmosphere between Ace and the leader was different from before, but because he didn't know what happened, he couldn't confirm this guess.

"Haha, it's over now, everything will be fine soon."

Seeing that he didn't seem to want to talk about it any further, the colonel stopped asking.

…

Back in the chief's office in the port building, Mori Ougai was sitting not so properly, reading intelligence.

"Ace! You're back! Look at how I drew." Alice held up her drawing paper to show Ace who had just walked in.

Ace closed the door, half bent over to look at Alice's sketch, and praised her politely, "It's a great drawing."

As soon as he stood up, he heard a sigh from the other side of the forest bird.

Ace turned his head and glanced at him. Sen Ouwai's eyes were still on the intelligence. Just as he was about to look away, he heard Sen Ouwai sigh again.

Ace: “…”

He asked in a speechless voice, "Mr. Ouwai, what's wrong with you?"

After nearly six years of getting along, Mori Ouwai got used to Ace's chaos, and Ace of course got used to Mori Ouwai's behavior.

When Mori Ogai wanted to hint something to him or get him to do something for him, his usual method was to pretend to be worried or to act miserable, inducing Ace to ask him questions, and then he would take the opportunity to bring up his own troubles, trying to get Ace to share his worries.

This caught Ace's attention, and he immediately began the next step of pretending to be sad -

He sighed once more and said gloomily, "Oh, I feel so bad. Dazai-kun defected from me and went to our old rival. This is so sad."

"Old rival?" Ace tilted his head. "What old rival?"

"You know them too," Mori Ogai said with a smile, "The Armed Detective Agency."