——

Armed detective agency.

The Armed Detective Agency is a bit deserted now. The usually bustling Dazai Osamu is not in the agency, the Tanizaki siblings have gone to school, and Kunikida and Nakajima Atsushi are also out on field work.

Edogawa Ranpo sat beside Fukuzawa Noriyoshi's bed, looking depressed. All the curtains were drawn and the room was dark.

The black-haired detective was just in a daze. He was unwilling and refused to think about the possible ending of Fukuzawa Yoshikichi.

He really wanted to figure out at a glance who was behind the president's attack and what kind of poison he had used - but he couldn't.

At this moment, he even really, really hoped that he really had the so-called supernatural power of "super reasoning".

In fact, he and Dazai Osamu have already guessed who planned this incident - there is no need to think about it, it must be the demon Fyodor.

He came to Yokohama for "books".

As for why only Dazai Osamu went there, while he stayed here.

It’s because…

Suddenly, there was a rustling sound in my ears, like the sound of arthropods crawling on the ground, which was very strange.

But Edogawa Ranpo didn't pay any attention to either of them. He just stared at Fukuzawa Noriyoshi's face on the hospital bed without saying a word.

The sound was getting closer.

Edogawa Ranpo felt a little excited—not the kind of excitement that comes from encountering a new mystery, well, maybe a little.

But more importantly, there is a way to save the president faster.

The sound stopped not far from him.

Edogawa Ranpo still didn't look back. He didn't know how far this unknown bug was from him, because he was just an ordinary person and was far from being able to accurately judge where Mr. Bug would stop.

But we can roughly estimate that it is about 2 to 3 meters away.

Exposing your back to others feels very bad, and the whole person is wrapped in a feeling of uneasiness. Under this uneasiness, Edogawa Ranpo's five senses are once again heightened.

He heard Mr. Bug flex his joints and his front legs came up, then the second pair.

Mr. Bug was opening and closing his mouthparts, and the sound of hard objects colliding was particularly obvious in the quiet and dark room.

Its mouthparts are probably of the long, saw-toothed type.

Because Edogawa Ranpo could hear the teeth-grinding sound of two uneven pieces of metal rubbing against each other.

"Let me guess, you want the power, right?"

It is Mr. Bug who is speaking. His tone is a little strange, but his pronunciation is very clear, like singing, and his emphasis appears in several places in the sentence.

Although it used a very gentle tone, its voice was very sharp, and mixed with some background sounds like insects eating, which made its gentle tone a little weird.

At the same time, while it was speaking, it seemed to be constantly turning its head. Edogawa Ranpo didn't know where the light came from. He only knew that Mr. Bug's body was in the light, so his shadow existed on the wall and the ground not far away.

The floor was not big enough, and it seemed unable to accommodate Mr. Bug's huge body. At the junction of the wall and the floor, Mr. Bug's body and head were forced to move out of place.

At this moment, the huge head with long thin beard was rotating left and right in a slow and strange posture, as if it was shaking like a fan, accompanied by a teeth-grinding, bone-colliding creaking sound.

Edogawa Ranpo puffed out his cheeks and slowly turned his head.

“…”