The Eccentric, the Beauty, and the Detective: Kiriki Junka's Mystery Log Volume 2 Chapter 19

“Hayaaa!” responded Junka in kind.

Ducking under the flying kick, he sent a backfist flying as he turned around. The one in black dodged it, however, and lowered her hips to respond with a karate punch. Junka shifted his posture out of the way of the Gouken attack, and struck his opponent in the chest, breaking her stance, pushing her over.

Mounting her, Junka brandished his fists.

“Y-you got me, Onii-chan.”

She had a fairly feminine voice, it seemed. Our attacker had given up. Junka stood up and stepped back.

“You're still green, Ai-kun.”

“Looks like I lost again.”

She took of her helmet and sighed. I stared in amazement: the young girl had a very similar beauty to her brother. She had dark, round eyes; a playful nose, and lips with a hint of maturity, yet still cherubic. She had longish hair, slender arms, slender legs, and no chest.

“Hmm?”

Finally noticing that I was there, her gaze quickly looked over my face.

She put her hands together, and excitedly said, “How wonderful!”

She'd praised me.

I lost a bit of my presence of mind at the sight of her seriously lovestruck appearance. Nimbly smoothing out her clothing, she shot me an amorous gaze.

“They call me Kiriki Ai. What is your name? Would you be so kind as to inform me of it?”

“I'm Suzaku Rouji, a close friend of Junka's.”

“Rouji, Rouji! A lovely name it is!” she frolicked.

“That aside,” I asked, “What was that just now? And those clothes; do you do karate?”

She blushed.

“I am the humble, and first master of my own personal style of kung-fu: the Fist of the Tumult of War. I had asked my brother to be my practice partner and his response was, ‘come at me whenever,' so as per the letter of our agreement, I attack him ‘whenever,' even if that means meal time, or when he's asleep. Unfortunately, despite 400 attacks, I have yet to be victorious once.”

“Why the helmet?”

“Onii-chan told me it'd be a problem if my face was scarred, and so he ordered me to wear it.”

My shoulders felt the weight of the realisation that I was probably never going to understand the two siblings.

“Okay, so the penalty for losing this time is to wait upon us,” ordered Junka.

“Right-o. So, Rouji-san, what would you like? Cola? Milk? Ice-coffee?”

I narrowed my eyes.

“I'll have a coke, then.”

“All right!”

Ai hummed a song as she descended the stairway in a good mood. Once her footsteps had become distant, I felt a sharp prick on my back.

“What?”

Behind us, and a doorway, peeked Junka's mom with a small airsoft gun. I just noticed that she had blonde hair, and seemed quite youthful.

Junka scolded me, “That's no good, you know. You have to call ‘hit.' You got hit in an airsoft war, after all. You aren't a zombie, after all.”

Why was he mad at me?

“Yeah, yeah. Hit! HIT!”

His mom looked satisfied, nodded, and disappeared behind the door. I was already exhausted.

“Your mom's quite young, eh? How old is she?”

“34 this year.”

I almost did a double take.

“Are you telling me that she birthed you at 18!?”

“Yup. By the way, my dad was 23 at the time. They married young.”

A sandalphillic father, a skilled airsofter of a mother, a shrieking assailant of a sister, and finally the eccentric Junka: the family lacked even a single normal human being.

“Now, we've wasted enough time, so let's head into my room now, eh, Rouji-kun?”

His doorplate read “Inoki vs Ari.” I had no idea why it didn't just say “Junka.”

I timidly set foot inside.

“You…”

Just as he said, Junka had pasted an enlarged copy of the June article of the Shibuyamadai High School Student Paper on not only the walls, not only the ceiling, but also on every single surface. He'd really done it.

“How is it? Great, eh? It really heals the soul.”

Well, a man was able to decide how to decorate his own room… he must've been really happy about that article.

At any rate, if the articles were removed, his room would be minimalist. It was too minimalist. He had a brown desk, a simple pipe-framed bed, and a bookshelf lined with tasteful, yet manly manga such as Sakigake!! Otokojuku, and Golgo 13. He had a small trash bin with geometric patterns on it, a closet for clothes, and a charger for his phone. There was nothing else.

“What's this? No console?”

“No TV.”

That was true. He didn't have a TV. I wondered how he got information.

“No colour scheme, eh?”

I sat on his bed and was surprised by the weak springs. It was cheap.

“I'm impressed you can live in a room built for a prisoner to study fine art.”

“Well, I've got AC at least. If it's pleasant enough, I can deal with any amount of boredom.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Onii-chan, I brought the coke.”

“Come in.”

Ai came carefully into the room with a tray of cups, having changed into a grey sleeveless top and checkered skirt. It was quite the feminine transformation from her gi earlier.

“Here you are, Rouji-san. Your coke and snacks.”

“Thanks.”

Cheeks tinged pink, Ai placed the tray on the table and knelt down at it. Junka raised an eyebrow.

“Alright, Ai-kun. You can leave now.”

She pouted, irritated.

“But I wanted to talk to Rouji-san. Hey, Rouji-san?”

The eyes she'd turned to me had some kind of strange expectation. I wasn't confident in my ability to react, so I looked away.

“Sorry, but we've got important matters to discuss.”

It was a lie, of course, but I didn't consider it cowardice. She nodded disappointedly.

“I understand… later, then, Rouji-san.”

She left with drooping shoulders. As her pitiful outline disappeared behind the door, the sound of carbonation fizzing reached my ear.

Junka sat crossed legged on the grey carpet and started shoveling peanuts into his mouth from the bowl on the table.

“It's a shame about Dad's company, but this is the Kiriki household. Is it not splendid?”

Nothing was splendid.

I got down from the bed and sat down like Junka to have some coke.

“Splendid or not, it's good that it's lively. I was also living as a family of four until just recently, awkwardness aside, but now it's just me and my mum.”

“Now that you mention it, your parents divorced, eh? A shame…”

“You'd better be careful, too Junka.”

I stuffed a little more persimmon in my mouth than was polite.

“Peaceful days can quickly go bad. Make a mess of everything, or somebody has to break. We went for the former…”

Junka nodded profusely.

“That's true. I'll be careful.”

After that we changed the subject many times.

All in all, I spent about two hours chatting frivolously with Junka, and after apologising for my extended stay, I went to my own home next door. I never got to meet Junka's father.

“I'm back.”

The happy greeting was from Hinata. She'd come back from Shibuyamadai Hospital with no bad news on her report.

“Are you all better now, Hinatchan?”

Hinata had gone out of her way to make her way down to class 3 in the morning rush, and Nao was worried. The bandage on Hinata's head was only covering a bruise, and she was able to freely move her arms and legs.

“That's right. I'm all better! Sorry to cause concern.”

Her usual black rimmed glasses had broken in the fall, so she was now sporting gilded rims. Her camera seemed fine too, as it was dangling from her neck as always.

Translator's Note:

After years of interacting with the Japanese, I can now clearly say that in general, they are lolicons. The default setting for Japanese males is lolicon.

Editor's Note:

Good going, me-from-the-past. This has been an absolute breeze to edit. I didn't even touch more than a couple minor errors. I can see why Dr. MIA, my original editor way back in the day, used to complain about feeling redundant. Not that there aren't chapters in which I seriously need some editing. Not that sentence fragments don't appear from time to time. This is a representation of spoken English, though, and there are times when the rules must be broken for impact.

Not all English teachers appreciate rhetoric, ironically enough. Maybe it's too Greek.

Chapter end