Chapter 17 The Fourth Day of Working
Yokohama.
It's early morning, and behind me are the streets of Yokohama. There are only a few scattered groups of people. At first glance, you can see elderly men who love to go for a morning run, high school students in neat uniforms, and office workers in black suits and floral ties.
His gaze returned.
Standing in front of me was a towering building that seemed to reach the clouds.
As you can see, my consciousness has once again detached from my physical body. In its place, I have adopted a different identity.
Good morning, or so you say.
Good morning, Miss Louisa.
I am currently working at a security company called Manhasset in Yokohama. The lovely girl with glasses who greeted me is my colleague, Ms. Louisa.
As you can tell from her name, Miss Louisa is not from Japan, and that is indeed the case; Miss Louisa is from North America.
If I remember correctly, her full name is... Louisa Alcott?
It's definitely Louisa Alcott.
To be honest, I think the hardest thing about working in Manhasset is remembering my colleagues' names.
Because Miss Louisa is not the only person from North America in this company.
Nearly all of the top executives, and even Manhasset's CEO, Mr. Fitzgerald, who is now my direct superior, are from North America.
According to Miss Louisa, they all came to Yokohama by ocean with Mr. Fitzgerald.
...I don't really understand why these North Americans would go to the trouble of crossing continents to open a small, run-down security company in Yokohama.
I suspect Yokohama has something unique that I don't know about.
Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why over 90% to nearly 100% of people with special abilities in Japan are in Yokohama.
"Oh, or."
“Mark,” I nodded, “are we going out?”
"Yes," he replied with a smile.
The reddish-brown-haired young man who greeted me with a bright, sunny smile was Mark Twain, who was also from North America.
I only learned later that his real name wasn't Mark Twain.
I heard that he had been a navigator on the Mississippi River. Mark Twain's name comes from the local sailors' term used to indicate the depth of the water measured on the waterway.
As for his original name...
etc.
What was Mark's real name again?
I think I forgot.
Because my surname plus my given name is too long, and I never use it in my daily work interactions, and I've only heard him mention it once, it's just taken for granted now.
—I forgot.
Oh, dear Mark.
Don't blame me.
Oh well, never mind.
Anyway, as long as I don't say anything, no one will know that I forgot.
Mark never told me why he changed his name, but since I knew he was writing his autobiographical novel, I guessed he was planning to use Mark Twain as a pen name.
Among my colleagues at Manhasset, who I'm relatively close to, I know three people who enjoy writing: Mark, Miss Louisa (whom I just met), and Poe (whom I haven't seen yet).
Apart from Mark, the latter two's writing is more or less related to their own supernatural abilities.
Because I encountered many people with superpowers in Yokohama, I discovered a characteristic of superpowers a long time ago.
That is, the effect of a superpower usually has little to do with its name.
For example, the most well-known "Double Black" duo in the Port Mafia has Osamu Dazai's ability called "No Longer Human," which nullifies other supernatural abilities, and Chuuya Nakahara's ability called "In the Turbid Sorrow," which controls gravity.
Both of these are the kind of superpowers whose effects are impossible to guess just by looking at their names.
The connection between the two is simply too perplexing.
Especially Nakahara Chuuya.
Just hearing the name makes me think it's some kind of mind control ability that can make someone depressed.
The result is that it's incredibly wild to use.
Louisa and Poe are the same.
Miss Louisa's superpower is called "Little Women".
Its function is to make time flow at a speed of one eight-thousandth when one is alone in a room.
So she often buries herself in her room writing reports.
Just between you and me, I think this ability suits me pretty well.
However, it's not for writing reports, but for sleeping.
Poe's superpower is called "The Black Cat of Morgue Street".
Its purpose is to draw readers into the detective novel the author has written, and the solution is to find the murderer in the book.
Poe loved detective novels; his passion for mystery was quite high.
There are probably only two things he likes most in the world: detective novels and his pet raccoon named Carl.
Sometimes I think that if he and Ranpo knew each other, they would probably get along very well.
Although he may be a bit childish, he is always far more intelligent than the average person.
If I hadn't met Ranpo beforehand, I would definitely have been amazed by his quick-thinking little brain.
But Edogawa Ranpo was too outrageous.
I don't read mystery novels much, and I don't know much about mystery.
Having known Ranpo for so long and seen him solve so many problems that even the police struggled with, all the information I received from my senses made me instinctively believe that Ranpo's reasoning ability was absolutely as powerful as Gojo Satoru's spellcasting ability, so powerful that I would never forget it once I had seen it.
If the mystery genre exists, then Ranpo's position in it would undoubtedly be as unshakeable and unique as Gojo Satoru's position in the jutsu genre.
When I first saw Gojo-sensei perform the Exorcism Special Grade, I was thinking, "Holy crap, how can there be such a handsome man?"
The first time I went with Ranpo to solve a case and heard him point out the culprit, I was also thinking how could there be such a smart person.
They are true geniuses.
The upper limit is far beyond that of ordinary people; the enormous chasm between them cannot be bridged simply by hard work.
Since effort determines the lower limit, it can also easily push the lower limit forward.
The upper limit may be able to be raised, but it is definitely not a simple matter.
Just like for sorcerers, most sorcerers actually reach the limit at level one or near level one.
There are examples of people who are level one sorcerers at eighteen and still are at eighty.
It would be more accurate to describe it as "not lacking at all" rather than "not entirely lacking".
Undeniably, the world is always dominated by ordinary people; those above and below are two extremes.
That's why the phrase "once in a thousand years" is used to describe a genius—it's both exaggerated and not exaggerated.
For someone like me, being able to know them is already an immense stroke of luck.
That's right.
Being able to become Mr. Gojo's student is truly the greatest fortune of my life.
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