City of Burning Snow

In a winter near the middle of the 21st century, when the birds from the spring broke through the ice and snow again, and stepped on the white snow with their slender feet, the hydroelectric dam in Moscow was finally surrounded by soldiers from the tower.

The crowd cautiously looked around for suspicious signs.

A soldier cast a curious look at the messy footprints on the table and the little black residue left beside him. He climbed up the open vent, but touched the ashes on his nose.Belinsky's shiny black military boots wandered around the hall anxiously, causing Turgenev, who was sitting on the sofa, to raise his head several times.

"I'm talking about you... Even if you step on all the floorboards now, Mr. Dostoevsky and Mr. Gogol can't jump out of the gap. You can lighten the fire and see what's here. What to drink, I remember they used to keep the tea on the mantel shelf..."

"The Tower of London blames us all for this theft! That loathsome, foul-mouthed, mean--"

"Hey, don't tell me, you are quite similar to that Ms. Agatha, and it will be more similar if you make your nasolabial folds a little heavier."

"Mr. Turgenev!"

The good-natured young man took off his hat and just scratched his forehead when he felt his body jump up for a moment.Angrily, his colleague slammed onto the sofa cushion and kicked up all the old ashes in the cushion. "If I catch that kid Dostoevsky first, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll smash all his teeth and glue them back together! Let him show that kind of shit again later." Smile, let him look down on people less!"

"Good idea, good idea, I'll help you remember it," Turgenev coughed as he fanned away the gray smoke with his hat, "but let's think about what to do next. It's a deadlock. At that time, there was internal turmoil on our side, and the Tower of London on the opposite side took the lead. I think they are going to take the opportunity to quarrel with more topics. We need to put more pressure on the allies... Genoa appeared again A civilian riot broke out, and our arms were intercepted at the port..."

He stopped talking and saw a military sedan from the window.An intelligence agent hurried out, talking to the soldiers guarding the door, and at the same time, Belinsky thought about the phone call. He picked it up, and then looked at his colleague dumbfounded: "Hull Cen said that the British army is going to discuss peace talks today."

"……what?"

Turgenev was also dumbfounded.

"He said let us both go..."

The crowd gradually made whispers from the doorway.

The intelligence agent was approved to rush to the two of them, and recounted the news Belinsky heard on the phone in detail. His complexion was very complicated, and his eyes shone with light.

The soldier who jumped back from the vent pipe was disheveled and found nothing but a dead cat body. His soles shook off the few black ashes left on the table. On the other side of Europe, he struggled through the politics inside the Tower of London. Agatha finally returned to her post, and before she had any time to breathe, her desktop was already occupied by piles of disaster reports.

"The death toll in Lisbon increases by another 52!"

Edgar, who was accepted as her resident secretary, pointed at the report with concern, "Not only in the UK, it seems that in just a few days, this disease has begun to appear in various countries in Western Europe. The death toll is too high. It is clear whether it is a mental infection or a blood transmission, but if this goes on—”

"Have any civilians been affected?"

"No, all sentinel groups will be infected with the disease."

"Send me the latest distribution map."

Agatha frowned.She stared at the table. The black tea beside her had already cooled completely. The electronic screen embedded in the table flicked across several maps. The data is connected with the map name. After a few seconds, red dots are all over the upper left part of the world map. The densest place is the Tower of London.But she paused for a moment and noticed another detail—

"Add the timeline as well."

"Is it okay to use green? I think it might be a bit dazzling, but it seems to be the only one..."

Edgar manipulated the electronic pen with a guilty conscience under the watchful eyes of his superiors, and the reporting time of infectious diseases in the past month was also added to the display map.Spots of green ran through the red fields, and the lines stretched here and there from Siberia, and spread out like the ends of branches into the range of Western Europe.Agatha's face was gloomy. She clicked on the screen to zoom in on the source of the green branch, which was a location she was most familiar with—

——"Ah~ha. Sure enough, I think the virus came from the coordinates of the Shibusawa family's mansion."

Half a year later, on the other side of the ocean, at a street intersection in Yokohama where the cherry blossoms were just blooming, the sound of several young people talking together floated from the glass window with the words "Armed Detective Agency".The tall and slender young man clasped his hands together as if he had won a complete victory, and was about to make a triumphant expression.Colleagues behind the side compartment panel overruled him.

"Let me tell you, you only knew it through inductive questions and reading Nakajima's shallow memory, so how can you guess it yourself. Next one."

"However, I am also a conductor after all. I can't say that there is nothing wrong with using my personal ability. Don't you think so?"

"Hey, even if you ask me..."

Six months ago, blood samples from the Yokohama Tower were stolen. After several months of underground tracking, the crimes of the senior guide of New Russia gradually surfaced.Guide Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky and his companion Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol-Yanovsky at the Novorussian Tower After resisting the pursuit, he then stole a small amount of blood samples from his country and the UK, and was captured by the Tower of London for a time.

After rigorous interrogation, Dostoyevsky explained the storage location of the blood samples in Yokohama, and not long after, soldiers outside the tower in Moscow and London received express mails left by unknown persons.All the samples returned to the world, and Dostoevsky and Gogol, who had escaped from the Tower of London, disappeared mysteriously.The sample theft case turned around, and large-scale blood diseases began to appear in Western Europe.Its horror is second only to the Black Death, and it is unimaginable that only the sentinel groups are affected by the epidemic——

"If you think about it carefully, you will know. If someone wants to disrupt the pace of scientific research, wreak havoc on its dabbling group, and make it itself a problem that restricts its own development——want to strengthen it with the blood of sentinels People, don’t they have ideas that have been popular for a while? If there is such a serious disease that infects people other than ordinary people, then such strengthening will definitely be resisted by the people.”

"Hey—you seem to understand it very well, Dazai."

The tall young man shrugged. "Anyway, if it were me, I would probably do the same."

"A lot of people died, but it was a blessing in disguise. Now the main warlord's vitality has been seriously injured, and there is no way to roll up the whistle to fight again in the near future. Dun, what is the next question? Don't you have a lot to ask? Mine."

"Didn't Mr. Dazai feel bored at first, and then forced me to ask questions..." A normal person popped up every 5 minutes, "Hey, as a junior, is there anything you want to ask me, Atsushi-kun ?” After that, wouldn’t you rack your brains and start asking questions!The boy in overalls asked all morning, but he really had nothing to ask. He looked to the side as if asking for help, Edogawa Ranpo narrowed his eyes, and yawned very lazily, which was completely opposite to the serious topic.

"You'll understand after a while, Atsushi. Dazai has this kind of personality. Rather than asking about things you know the answer to, asking about things you don't know at all might just let him know."

"But in that case, we don't know if he got the answer right?"

"Idiot? You. Questions don't always need to be answered correctly. Especially here, when it comes to work, work is always about finding out the truth. A question without the truth is the norm during the break." .”

Edogawa, who has never encountered this kind of problem, sighed, a certain maturity appeared on his childish baby face, Dazai Osamu lightly threw a candy on his hat, he picked it up, slowly Peel the paper.

"It's time for dinner, and the president and everyone haven't come back yet. Yosano and Yosano are usually not called to participate in this kind of international conference, which means that the disaster situation in Japan has begun to subside now."

"It's as fast as the wind, as slow as the forest, and as aggressive as fire—"

"—Okay, then you are the one who is as immovable as a mountain today, Dazai."

Osamu Dazai just picked up the folding fan, wanting to imitate the usual calm aura of the head of the detective agency, he slumped down, "...wait a minute," he leaned over and looked at the dead face of his colleague chewing candy, thinking to himself I knew I wouldn't give him candy. "Are you saying that on purpose to avoid the most troublesome thing?"

Luanbu bit the sugar into a crunching sound.

"I think it's better to deal with who's trouble, otherwise, I think you want to push it to Nakajima to deal with it? Seeing that he is still a newcomer, hey, newcomer-let's go, let's go Have a meal."

The light-haired Nakajima lay blankly beside the partition board, looking back and forth between the two as if watching a tennis match.He looked back at Ranpo Edogawa who got up to put on his coat.

"What charades are you playing again?"

"It's nothing, let Dazai stay here alone to look after the house once in a while. Let's bring him the food."

"Eh……"

When Osamu Dazai was the only one left in the detective agency, he was lying in the high-end swivel chair that Fukuzawa usually made, with his eyes closed in boredom, and his toes pointing to the ground.

Thinking about a certain scene on the train half a year ago, the kite brown eyes slightly narrowed.

"Peace... huh?"

The image of the senior Russian guide clutching the sentry's hand in embarrassment still remains in the black-haired youth's mind.

Half a year ago, the sentinels at that time already exuded a dangerous aura that even the lowest animals could easily detect, and anyone who approached would suffer.He still finds it unbelievable to this day, because Dostoevsky, who sneaked into the Yokohama Tower together, is the same kind of person as Shibusawa, who is so indifferent that he feels a little disgusted.

——Why did you become like an ordinary person at that time?

He muttered in a low voice, "Interfering with another kind of justice for one's own justice, using war to end the war, as expected, no matter which one is stupid."

He pondered, and suddenly smiled lowly.

Half a year ago, when negotiating details with the man with a beer belly, he accidentally saw Pushkin's medical card that fell out.That is not an ordinary card, but a red door card that is exclusive to the special needs department and suitable for long-term use by difficult patients.The plastic card surface has been scratched several times by keys, and it seems that it is often used to the point where it is never out of hand.Pushkin was hiccupping, and after Dazai Osamu brought him the tenth glass of wine with a smile, he was half asleep and half awake.

"Who knows the reason...Nobodies like us just do what we need to do and keep our mouths shut. Otherwise, what else can we do? Anyway, if you draw blood, you can draw blood! If you don't allow it, the people in the hospital Said that I am a typical virus carrier, what is [-]%..."

"Then why do you still let him draw blood? Mr. Pushkin, are you not afraid of retribution?"

"I can, can have any retribution, and Mr. Dostoevsky will bear the retribution himself! Anyway, he promised to give the antidote. He said that, isn't that good? As for death Undead, I'm just a small person..." He muttered, "Little person..."

Pushkin leaned over the table.In the end, I couldn't bear the drowsiness and started to snore loudly.

Before Pushkin could fully meet his eyes, Osamu Dazai slapped him awake vigorously. Pushkin poured out half a glass of wine, roared and looked at the back of no one in a daze. The tracking chip was affixed to the back of Pushkin's phone.

"I'm a little man too, Mr. Pushkin. I wouldn't do that."

He smiled and stood up.

"Then see you later."

He took out a few banknotes from Pushkin's pocket and threw them on the bar. The man scratched the back of his bald head, took half a sip of wine and fell asleep again.Osamu Dazai in his memory waved to the sleeping man, he pushed open the glass door with a bell, leaving a long, quiet shadow under the street lights——

The once dark uniform has been replaced by a beige trench coat, and petals fall on his softening face.In reality, Dazai Osamu is also a little bit asleep, and he is sleepy in spring.

He leaned over and sat upright, stretching his numb limbs like a cat, stretching his waist halfway, and then fell back slowly.The mysterious guest that he and Edogawa expected had quietly walked around the pile of messy cardboard boxes and documents, walked to Fukuzawa's desk, and sat on the guest sofa.The two took off their sunglasses one by one, looking like a celebrity descending to the earth to observe the people's sentiments.

One put the separate isolation suit fabric on the left shoulder, and the other was tied around the neck as a scarf, and the breath was mostly hidden.

Dazai didn't react in advance.The crisp sound of the bell came back to reality from memory.

——"Yes, that's the case."

Mr. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the former senior guide of New Russia and now one of the most wanted criminals in the world, with an innocent face and a bit difficult to deal with, handed over two forged passports to the table.As he spoke, Gogol barked his teeth and pointed at the side to express his full love for the plaque behind Dazai.

"May I ask why these two documents cannot pass the rental audit?"

Gogol was whining for a long time. Osamu Dazai thought it was the legendary Ukrainian language, but then he realized that it was not Ukrainian, but was really whining. With a look of habit on his face, Ski continued to talk about their reason for coming.

"Mr. Detective, can you take a look for us? By the way, help us settle the issue of rent and pension. I'm really sorry for you."

"Hey, Mr. Dostoevsky, this is not a marriage agency."

"Why, isn't your detective agency specialized in such gray areas?"

Dostoevsky spread his hands, and he hooked the corner of his lower lip, revealing some kind of nature.Dazai was a little speechless.He flipped through the documents casually, and seeing the real reason why the documents were not approved, he was even more speechless.

"...Why do you use cartoon avatars?"

The Ukrainian immediately stopped wow.

"I'm so sorry for the panic!"

As if being praised by someone, his eyes are bright, with thin scars on them, and his Japanese is quite proficient but full of mistakes.

"I saw the candy box of the Tomita family or the Kamiji family this morning, it was very cute! I was very moved, and the whole country mourned! I drew two pictures of it."

"...Your Japanese level is better to speak English with me."

"Anyway."

In the soft light of the afternoon, the corners of the young man's lips quickly returned to their original obedient curvature, and he glanced at the people around him reasonably.

"We haven't repaid him for all the troubles he caused us before... we have to find a way to repay him, right, Nikolai."

"If we don't solve our household registration problem, we will expose your old background! Comrade Osamu Dazai!"

Gogol said happily.

Osamu Dazai wiped his face.

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